@buck-melanoma Thanks Buck! For players, Year 4 is usually the beginning of their ‘prime’. Not sure at this stage if our longevity ends up being that of a bell-cow Running Back, or a longstanding QB1, but we’re enjoying what we’re doing still so we’re looking forward to the season.

Gadsden will always be “my guy”. Each offseason, I scout a handful of players whose tape moves me to the point of vocal exclamation. Gadsden at Syracuse was one of those guys and Ryan and I both thought he was flying under the radar amongst the draft analyst community. As Tau says below, he will have to fight for playing time early in his career. But I am optimistic that he can becomes one of the steals of the class. A future as a genuine TE1 is not beyond him if he keeps wording on the blocking side of his game.

Fair enough on the Telesco talk. Tbh, I thought we were a little rusty yday overall and could have done a better job and relating that segment to how Hortiz operates to make it more relevant. We’ll round into regular season form by September 😉 

@tau837 Great detailed comment. Thank you!

Sitting here today, I expect the team will open the season with Zion at LG and Bozeman at C.

You have a good track record of avoiding the ‘noise’ around this time of year and sticking true to what you see from other indicia (statistical metrics, contract details, etc). Often you end up being correct.

This will be an interesting one to monitor. Through OTAs/Minicamp it seems that the two are rotating but Zion is seeing more of the share at Center. Maybe that was part of the offseason plan, getting those snaps into Zion early, but by training camp we see it flipped? I guess I’m seeing what I want to see out there. The Zion/Bozeman combo struggled for most of last season, and I choose to believe that the coaching staff/front office aren’t just going to run it back. We’ll see. Maybe, like you predict, they’re banking on a second year in the same system together, with Becton in tow, leading to different results.

I disagree completely that QJ is the player under the most pressure on the roster. Exactly the opposite, actually… upgrading the playmakers around him takes pressure off. He is entering the 3rd year of a fully guaranteed 4 year contract, so not really any pressure from playing for a contract or playing for a raise — he is getting paid the set contract amount for his 3rd and 4th years no matter what. The coaching staff likes him, and he knows what he has to do and, according to Lal, is doing just that.

Totally get your perspective on this. I think I was coming at it from a slightly different angle.

I assume QJ’s goal is to establish himself as a bona fide NFL WR1, receive a big contract extension from the Chargers ($20m+ per season), and not just eke out an existence as a WR3 on a roster getting limited targets. From that perspective (where he was drafted v his future role with the Chargers), he, perhaps with Zion, is under the most pressure to perform this year.

The rest of what you say I’m on board with. QJ should be put in better positions to succeed from those fewer looks. To me, that doesn’t mean the pressure isn’t on though. He doesn’t have the ‘political capital’ with this front office that a guy like McConkey has – who they drafted and has performed at an exemplary level. Could I see a scenario where this time next season, QJ is being traded or cut because they’ve added another offseason’s worth of weapons around him? Yes, I could.

To an extent, every player has to fight every year to justify their future with the team. But hopefully this clarifies where I’m coming from. The pressure is off in one respect (for the reasons you mention), but very much on, in another.  

My thought is that they are trying to Moneyball the entire roster other than 4 position groups: QB, OL, Edge, S. When the team has as much money committed to those position groups, particularly Herbert, Slater, Becton, Mack, and James, sacrifices must be made elsewhere. You could make the exact same kind of argument about the WR group.

Yes, most teams spend more on CB, but they also don’t typically spend as much on the safety group. In 2025, James has the highest cap hit of all safeties in the league, and the Chargers have more cap space committed to the safety group than any other team. It’s not even close. So it makes sense that they have a cheaper CB group. If you combine CB and S into a single DB group, the Chargers are 6th in cap spending for 2025.

Good points! And when you add to this that the Chargers play with 3 safeties on the field more often than most teams, it’s a clever way of thinking about it.

I remain convinced that this approach has not maximized use of all resources to maximize winning in 2025. I’ll change my stance if and when he does something that shows he needed to preserve that cap space.

Totally agree.

@tau837 I agree with your take on Zion and Bozeman. I think H&H are trying to save face by shuffling Zion at C. I have a hunch that FA and the draft didn’t go close to what they expected and are trying to paint the picture that this was the plan all along. I don’t buy it. When you flesh it out the theory has plenty of holes.

1. Zion’s weakest attribute is his awareness, and he only had to have it for one position. So the solution to this is to move him to a new position that he’s never played before or have any comfortability at which requires a much bigger responsibility and awareness level to set the rest of the line?

2. They signed James AND brought Bozeman back just so neither of them could play C because the plan was to move your starting LG there? If that was the plan why sign James and not another OG?

3. The IOL was the weak link on the team last season, so the answer was to swap your LG and C so they are both playing positions they are weaker at?

I think the price tags in FA gave them sticker shock and the draft board in Rd1 became a blood bath before their pick taking their top targets off the board. They tried to trade out, but were up against the clock and just defaulted to their board by selecting Hampton. This roster was not in a place where a RD1 RB was the finishing piece target. That started the domino effect for the rest of the draft.