Tomlinson Nominated for Four ESPYs
NFL MVP and San Diego Charger workhorse LaDainian Tomlinson has been nominate for four ESPYs, the most of any NFL player this year. Tomlinson is nominated in the categories for Best Male Athlete, Best Record-Breaking Performance, and Best NFL Player as well as the HUMMER Like Nothing Else Award. Tomlinson set the league touchdown record last year for running backs, shattering the previous record set just a two years prior by Shaun Alexander of the Seahawks.
Not that the ESPYs actually mean anything or that anyone actually watches or cares about the ESPYs particularly, but this is kinda cool. Tomlinson had a monster year last year and should be acknowledged with a few more rewards. These awards are particularly special because they are voted on by the fans, and don’t simply confine Tomlinson to football greatness, but rather overall sports greatness for the year. So if you want to see Tomlinson win an ESPY or four, start voting now.
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Chargers Sign Another Player
The Chargers have signed a wide receiver by the name of Rich Musinski, according their their official website. Musinski is 5′11″, 210 lbs. He has played Arena Football and in NFL Europa, and I have never heard of him before in my life. Musinski attended the College of William and Mary, which I was not aware even had a football team. He has been signed and cut and waived by a few different teams, and now apparently the Chargers want to take a look at him during training camp.
I’m sure the whole city of San Diego is holding its collective breath waiting to see what the Chargers are going to do with this monumental signing. A 5′11″ white dude from Pennsylvania who went to a college with a girl’s name in the title (that i’m still not convinced actually has a real football team), who has been cut and/or waived by two other programs, oh my! This kid is a body for the defense to pound during training camp. Which can’t start soon enough, as far as I’m concerned.
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Chargers Look to Kill on Fantasy Draft Day
ESPN.com has published their annual projections for players you should draft in Fantasy football, and the Chargers are “reppin’ hard for the homies” or whatever slang the kids are using these days. San Diego has a top 10 QB in Philip Rivers (really, only number 10?), the number one running back on the board in LaDainian Tomlinson, and the number one tight end in Antonio Gates. Their defense is ranked number four by espn.com.
I think I recognize their kicker’s name in there somewhere too, but I honestly didn’t take the time to look that up, because he’s their kicker, and fantasy football is for people who hate going outside and/or live in places where the weather sucks during football season. As for me, I live in southern California, where it’s pretty much shorts weather all year long, so in lieu of playing fantasy football, I believe I’ll spend time trying to pick up women at the beach. In December. Seriously.
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Chargers Hoping “Player’s Coach” Strategy Pans Out
There’s an interesting article on ESPN.com right now by Jeffrey Chadiha talking about the movement toward “player’s coaches” in the NFL, such as Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith, both of whom took their teams to the Super Bowl last year. I have been an adamant critic of the hiring of coach Norv Turner by the Chargers in the past, but I must admit that this article makes some very salient points about the pros of hiring a player’s coach.
However, I must say, I have two words that debunk the myth of the player’s coach - Bill Belichick. You can talk all you want about how touchy feely player’s coaches who are also family men and treat their teams with a softer touch are all the rage, but the fact of the matter remains that the man who has had the most success in the NFL as of late is a crazy short man who eats, sleeps, and breathes football 12 months out of the year and expects the same from every member of his team. And if the Chargers underachieve this year and the Pats win another Super Bowl, then I’ll be here to tell you “I told you so.”
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More info on Chargers Manumaleuna Signing
As was reported here Friday, the Chargers have re-signed yet another integral piece of their team. This time, espn.com is running an article, in which they give a few more details about the signing as well as details on Manumaleuna’s career up to this point. It’s quite a well written, informative, and concise little article, and it offers a bit more information than the initial story.
I still have to play devil’s advocate here with the whole “The Chargers are doing such a great thing. The Chargers have their nucleus locked up for ___ more years.” My problems are as follows - 1) The Chargers haven’t done jack in the playoffs. period. How is keeping a team together that fell the hell apart in the playoffs in 2006 a good thing? Am I missing something? 2) Though the Chargers look great on paper, there’s never a guarantee they’ll ever get it done. Look at a team in the NBA like the Dallas Mavericks, who paid out the nose to keep their team in place after a 2005 NBA Finals run, only to fold in the first round in 2006. Now, the talk is that Dallas can’t win with this nucleus.
My point is, sports - especially at the professional level - are a fluid entity, and while some stability is good, too much of it can lead to stagnation. Plus, let’s not go crowning the Chargers until they actually win a playoff game.
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Chargers re-sign 7 year vet
According to the Chargers web site, San Diego re-signed tight end Brandon Manumaleuna that will keep him with the team through the 2009 season. This caps an impressive off season in which the the Chargers front office has locked down most of the team up until at least 2009, if not longer. The Chargers seem to believe that they have the right players in place to make a solid run at a Super Bowl, and are not interested in losing anyone.
Though at first glance this may appear like a genius move, keeping the bulk of a team that has achieved a high level together promotes team chemistry and in the parity-driven NFL, it should give you an edge over most of the competition in the long haul. However, just remember that it only takes one bad year to make contract extensions and big deal re-signings look terrible. What happens if this team underachieves in the playoffs again this year under a new coach? What happens if you need to make wholesale changes, but you can’t blow up the team because everyone is locked into big extended contracts? Ask the Dallas Mavericks how that’s working out for them over in the NBA.
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Charger to Host Football Camp
According to a report on the Chargers web site, 12 year veteran and San Diego Charger Roman Oben is going to be holding a youth football camp the last weekend in June. This is the fifth year for the Roman Oben Youth Football Camp, to be held at Mira Mesa High School in San Diego. Oben will be joined by many other NFL players and coaches, helping teach kids ages 8-14 technique, fundamentals, commitment, teamwork, and everything else that goes into playing any organized team sport. The camp takes place from June 28-30.
This is great. This is, once again, just another story that reiterates what I’ve been saying for awhile now. The San Diego Chargers are a team full of “Character” guys. Guys that understand what a privilege it is to play football professionally in the National Football League. These are guys who aren’t going out and getting arrested, or being photographed at strip clubs, or giving underage girls alcohol. That’s really just the Cincinnati Bengals. Factually, the rest of the league is full of teams that are full of guys just like this. But stories like this don’t generate hits for espn.com, so you don’t see them as much.
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Confessions of a Ball Boy
In what has been an extremely slow news day for the Chargers, I was finally able to find a story on NFL.com about being the ballboy for the Chargers. The story, written by one Scott Lemoine, The piece is a fun little snippet of an NFL game from a very different perspective, and probably one we’ve all wish, at one point or another, that we could have. Mr. Lemoine was lucky enough to serve as ball boy for one game, though it doesn’t actually say which game, and he apparently loved every minute of it. I could see why. I’d relish the experience as well.
There are a few things I want to say about this article. For one, it’s not badly written, though I wish they’d given Mr. Lemoine’s age, so that I could place a real character to the whole story. Two, I had no idea that there was a kid who had to run out and grab the kickoff tee after every kickoff. That’s intense. You screw something up, and the whole stadium will see you screw it up. Not to mention, if the kick gets run back for a TD, and you screw up and find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time, you could be killed. So all in all, I gotta say, I salute you, Mr. Lemoine.
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Former Charger Mulling Comeback
Former Charger wide receiver, Keenan McCardell is looking to return to the field this season, after being released recently by San Diego, according to a report on espn.com. McCardell has been an extremely productive receiver in the NFL for going on 15 years now, and there was speculation he would retire after being released by the Chargers. Now that he has decided to return, all that is left is to figure out where he will go. McCardell will most likely either finish out his career as a Texan, near his home in Houston, or as a Redskin, ending his career where it began.
McCardell is certainly high on the list of great receivers. No one can take that away from him. He is a two time Pro Bowler and he ranks highly in all receiving categories all time. However, as we were all witness to in the Jerry Rice debacle, when the wheels come off a wide receiver’s career, it is very very ugly. McCardell wasn’t exactly the epitome of offensive productivity last year. He wasn’t even used much toward the end of the season, and he finished without even one touchdown for the first time in over a decade. If McCardell doesn’t hang ‘em up this off-season, here’s hoping he can have one more productive year, and walk away. Nearly 20 years in the NFL is enough for anyone.
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Chargers star raising money to help the homeless
A story on the Chargers website is shining light on a side of Shawn Merriman many people never get a chance to see. The Chargers’ monster tackler is exhibiting his softer side, taking time out from football to host the “Lights on Comedy Jam,” a fund raiser to help the homeless. Merriman himself has experience firsthand with the problem of homelessness, as his family was in and out of shelters when he was a child. Held the last weekend in June, the event features a free football camp for youngsters, not to mention the volunteer painting of the Children’s Learning Center in San Diego this year. Many Chargers and other NFL players take part in this event.
This is the kind of story that doesn’t generally see the light of day in terms of full scale media coverage. But the fact of the matter is, for every NFL player making headlines for the wrong reasons, there are at least 10 stories of this nature. Even a guy who has seen his share of scandal (Merriman was suspended 4 games last year for violating the league’s substance abuse policy) like Shawn Merriman has the capacity to do some really good things. Even though stories about Pacman Jones and the Bengals wracking up arrest after arrest get the most publicity, it’s important to note that a good percentage of the guys in the NFL are not about those sorts of things.
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