Chargers Revamp Front Office
Generally, when see a headline like “Chargers Revamp Front Office,” you would think it was a bad thing. Most teams, when they have to go through a total front office changing of the guard, it is a symptom of an underlying problem, and there is a tumultuous period of firings and hirings that sends the team into a bit of a tempest until things straighten out. However, this is not the way the San Diego Chargers operate. Yesterday, with the resignation/retirement of assistant general manager Buddy Nix, the Chargers began a reshuffling of their front office that has worked out well for all involved.
The Chargers hired Randy Mueller, a former GM himself, to become senior executive for the Chargers. Mueller will be in charge of the scouting of NFL prospects. He will head a division of multiple recently-promoted executives underneath him. All in all, the Chargers have made their entire front office even stronger, proving yet again that they are one of the best football organizations in the entire NFL. Losing someone as instrumental as Nix could cripple a franchise. However, Smith addressed the situation quickly and efficiently, and the Chargers will be better for it.
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Chargers Seeking Tackle
The NFL draft has come and gone, and the basic consensus is that the Chargers did as well as could have been expected under the circumstances. While they were crippled by the loss of picks due to restricted free agent acquisitions a year ago, the Chargers still managed to address many of their needs, the most glaring of which was the running back backup situation. However, one area the Chargers were not able to address was offensive tackle. As such, the search is now on for offensive tackles who would like to play for the San Diego Chargers.
Somehow, I don’t think this is going to be a hard sell. There will be plenty of players with passable skill out there who would love to pull a paycheck while playing for a true contender. The Chargers are certainly in the conversation of possible Super Bowl representatives for the AFC, and this should help them attract quality players. When you add to that the fact that San Diego has some of the best weather in the entire country, not to mention a fan base that loves its team and sticks by them through thick and thin, you shouldn’t worry too much about the Chargers finding good quality offensive tackles to secure their depth chart.
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Chargers Relatively Quiet in the Draft
The Chargers weren’t expected to do much on draft day, and they delivered on that front. Just in case you’ve been living on the moon and missed it, the NFL draft happened over the weekend, and many a team has now picked their brand new superstars, or at least they hope they’ve picked their brand new superstars. The draft is often filled with more busts than it has sure things, and this draft is sure to be no exception. While it bears noting that it is legitimately impossible to say whether or not a draft is a success until many years down the road, that hasn’t stoped Mel Kiper Jr. over at EPSN.com from delivering his immediate post-draft grades for each and every team.
The San Diego Chargers were given a draft score overall of a C+. For a team that didn’t have many high picks to work with, that’s not a bad score at all. The Chargers love to build via the draft, and this year was no exception. They didn’t use this draft to address their need at right tackle, and as far as Mel Kiper Jr. is concerned, this is a big deal. I’m not sure if it will make or break the Chargers. This wasn’t exactly a year in which the Chargers needed a draft that bowled everyone over. I believe this draft was passable for a team that simply needed to keep themselves at the elite level.
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A.J. Smith Loves the Draft
As we sit here on the eve of the NFL draft, I feel that I should address one issue that has gone untouched in our Chargers draft coverage. The NFL draft is a very loaded event for many sports fans. They live and die by their fans’ picks. I cover multiple teams in the NFL, so I see this up close and personal. Many fans of teams who are just not in the running at the moment cling to their draft picks as though they are the last best hope for their hometown heroes to make the playoffs in a given year. However, in San Diego, the Chargers fans seem not to worry about such things.
The main reason for that is A.J. Smith. So I thought that on this Friday before the weekend of the draft, I would turn to an article written about A.J. Smith’s draft wizardry. The man is very good at what he does, and many of the picks he has made recently have become big deals in the sunny city I call home. The draft tomorrow will be watched by many San Diego fans, but none of them are holding their breath waiting to throw stones at our GM. No, Chargers fans can rest easy and trust A.J. Smith, and that type of trust is invaluable for a community of fans
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Chargers Draft Preview Part 4
We started this week looking at all the Chargers’ draft options. We will end this week looking at the Chargers draft options. The reason we are doing this is because the draft is this weekend, and I figure the very best way to get geeked for the draft is to immerse yourself in all things Chargers. The Bolts are in a great position to really help the team during this draft, even with fewer picks than usual. They can attribute this to a few things, but the main bonus the Super Chargers have going for them this year is the fact that they have very few needs in this offseason.
However, the Chargers do have one particularly pressing need. This last phase of the draft preview details how the Chargers will find a backup running back for LaDainian Tomlinson. With Michael Turner’s departure, the Bolts lost one of the very best backup running backs the league had ever seen. They must now use the draft to find a suitable replacement, in the rare instance that LT goes down at any point in the season. Lucky for the Bolts, this draft has some very solid running backs. However, if the Chargers want to select one of them, they may have to get a bit creative.
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Chargers Draft Preview Part 3
Just in case you weren’t aware, the NFL draft is this weekend. That means that this weekend, more men than anyone would care to admit are going to sit around their living rooms drinking beer, scratching, burping and high-fiving one another while they watch a game that nobody actually wins. The NFL draft has become something of a spectacle over the last decade as is evinced by the Union-Tribune’s four-part draft coverage of the Chargers. Today, we will take a look at part 3 of the Chargers draft preview. Don’t worry, there’s even a part 4 tomorrow.
Part 3 of the draft preview for the San Diego Super Chargers deals with the possibility of the team perhaps trading out of their 27th spot. While the writer doesn’t address the possibility of a trade head-on, he does at least mention that the Bolts might make a trade to get into the second round. He also gives the reason: The Chargers won’t likely be able to acquire the player they want with that draft pick (without drafting someone far too high). The Bolts will likely trade out of their spot, mostly due to the fact that they can still get the players they want in the second or third round, provided they can trade out and get the picks.
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Bolts Draft Preview Part 2
Today we’ll tackle the phase 2 of the San Diego Chargers’ draft preview, courtesy of the Union-Tribune. The Chargers have the 27th pick in the first round of this year’s draft, and their two most pressing needs at the moment are offensive line help and defensive backs. The article focuses mainly on the defensive talent that is expected to left on the board once the Bolts are finally on the clock. The Chargers will most likely go for the most talented player at either position, depending on who they rate highest when their number is called.
By that, I mean that the Chargers are not likely to pass up a defensive player who rates quite highly on their board just to fill a need at O-line. Obviously, if the Bolts find that an offensive linesman and cornerback have both fallen to them at 27, they will simply go with the player who they rate the highest. The Chargers have not been the types to fill needs first and go for skill second. They will likely pick up the very best player available to them - that is, if they don’t trade their first round pick for a couple of others. But that’s a blog for another day.
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San Diego Chargers Draft Preview
This week we’re going to be sitting down and taking a good hard look at the San Diego Chargers’ draft day needs. With the draft now less than a week away, the focus of ever NFL fan in the world is on next weekend. Which player will each team pick with their all important first-round selection? Beyond that, what will every team do with their later picks? These picks can go a long way toward determining a team’s future, and almost no non-sporting event is covered nearly as closely as the NFL draft. As such, this week will be mostly draft-oriented.
We will start with this article on phase 1 of the Chargers draft needs. If you have any love for the San Diego Chargers as a team or organization, you need to read this write-up immediately. It took me awhile to find it, but it is well-worth the read. I will continue to link to these different phases of the draft as the week progresses. To me, the most interesting part of this breakdown is that the writer asserts the Chargers will make a pick with their first selection, as opposed to trading it away to get a second and third round pick, which I have been figuring they would do.
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Chargers Not Moving to Los Angeles
With the proposed new NFL stadium in Los Angeles, there has been rampant reporting that the San Diego Chargers may be considering moving up to L.A. However, according to this article out of the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Chargers aren’t going anywhere. The Spanos family released a statement saying that the Chargers are committed to figuring out a plan for moving to a new stadium in Chula Vista. While some people will be skeptical that this is just lip service, I have to say that I believe the Spanos family. I’ll tell you why.
The San Diego Chargers are well-loved in this area. They compete with no one for attention. The Padres get the summer. The Chargers get the winter. It’s a great deal, business-wise. Los Angeles has Trojan and Bruin football, not to mention a ton of transplants from all over the country who have no desire to give up their favorite team to cheer for some new L.A. team that just moved up the freeway. Moving to Los Angeles is a bad business decision for the Chargers, and the Spanos family doesn’t make many of those. Therefore, I don’t see them moving to L.A.
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Cooper Suspended for Banned Stimulant
According to reports out of the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Chargers will be playing the first four games of their season without linebacker Stephen Cooper. Cooper has apparently been suspended by the league for testing positive for a banned substance. Cooper tested positive for ephedra, banned from the NFL not really for being a performance enhancer, but more for being an extremely dangerous stimulant that causes people to drop dead while exercising. Cooper issued a statement apologizing for testing positive for a banned substance.
While this certainly doesn’t help the Chargers at all, it’s not exactly a death blow to their season. It’s the first real “bad news” regarding one of their players (besides the whole car torching story, which technically doesn’t mean anything on the field of play) for the Bolts, which puts them far ahead of many teams in the NFL. It’s good in a way that the banned substance was only ephedra and not something like HGH or steroids. The Chargers really don’t need to become the team that is known for having their players juiced up. As is, this story should become a non-issue pretty quickly.
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