Chargers Gab

t’s finally starting to sink in that I’m an NFL player now that I’ve gotten to be around all the guys.

By far the biggest shock so far has been how fast everything goes. You hear about it leading up to the draft that the NFL is so much faster, but you can’t really understand it until you see it every day. The speed of the guys is insane. If you make one false move during a play you are going to get beat.

The one guy whose speed is just ridiculous is Darren Sproles. I have never seen a guy with his speed and energy. He goes 100 mph all the time. Being able to match his energy level on every play is what I strive for. He’s extremely passionate about the game too.

Right now I’m just trying to learn where to be and what to do on every single play. We have a pretty healthy playbook but not everything has been installed yet. When I saw our playbook I was excited to get out there and just get after it. I love football, I live it 24/7 so I was ready to go on day one.

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The San Diego Union Tribune reports that the Chargers training camp is going to be closed to the public this season:

A summertime tradition for thousands of Chargers fans will be interrupted this year when the team closes its training camp to the public due to safety concerns at Chargers Park. Replacement of a drainage pipe that burst in February and caused significant damage to the team’s Murphy Canyon facility is not scheduled to begin until at least later this month and is expected to take two to three months to complete.

Returning Chargers LB Shawne Merriman is coming back to the playing field in 2009, and feels that he’s got something to prove. Merriman recently was dumped to 12th on a list of the league’s top linebackers, and told Charles Robinson of Yahoo! Sports that he’s going to take it out on teams this year.

“I was pissed off,” Merriman recently told Charles Robinson of Yahoo! Sports. “I’m sitting there like, ‘Hold on, there are 11 guys in the league better than me? When did this happen?’ I know I didn’t play for a year, but I didn’t know I had that much of a drop-off. . . .

“People haven’t seen the best of me, not at all. In the past, I would tell someone, ‘I’m about to go out and just kill it this year.’ Now, I want people to just watch. I had enough doubters around before, and some people felt like I was just talking [trash] or just talking too much. My thing is, now I’m just talking about what I’ve done and what I’m doing right now, not about what I’m going to do.”

Merriman is coming back after he missed just about all of 2008 after undergoing surgery to repair the lateral collateral and posterior cruciate ligaments in his left knee. Two years ago he had 12.5 sacks in 15 games, and three years ago he was in on 17 sacks in 12 games.

The Chargers have no problem if Merriman is unhappy about the ranking, they’d like to see him play out that frustration on the field.

Today’s San Diego Union Tribune reports that the Chargers have ended efforts to put new home on city bayfront:

The Chargers’ courtship of Chula Vista as the site for a new football stadium has ended quietly, 3 1/2 years after it began. With a note. Chargers special counsel Mark Fabiani posted a message on the team’s Web site Wednesday saying its Chula Vista efforts are on hold because of long-known complications involving a power plant on the 130-acre bayfront site under consideration.

Chula Vista now joins National City and Oceanside as cities that the Chargers have considered for a new home - and rejected. The team is looking at Oceanside again, but at a site near an airport that could pose insurmountable problems. After so much fruitless study, it seems unlikely that interest would be rekindled in Chula Vista, but the Chargers left open the possibility.

A key question about the Chargers offense is what type of impact RB LaDainian Tomlinson will have this season. The back was the topic of a question during a chat with NFL.com’s Gil Brandt on Tuesday, and Brandt thinks that L.T. will have a big season coming off a career low in rushing in 2008:

LaDainian rushed for 1,100 yards and 11 TDs last year, which is not bad for most. I think he’ll be a little better this year — somewhere near 1,200-1,300 yards rushing. The OL will be better with Marcus McNeill healthy and Nick Hartwick back at center for the full season. I think you’ll see Darren Sproles get about the same number of carries he had last year.

One extra note: I expect chargers WR Vincent Jackson to have a breakout year in ‘09.

Today’s San Diego Union Tribune reports that top pick Larry English loves his mom, and gives her most of the credit for his success as the teams top pick:

Larry English is a professional football player, just as expected. He knows the single-mindedness of his focus was in a way foolhardy - “considering the odds,” he said - but it was a plan that was real and unwavering (and along the way he got a college degree, too). “I always saw this as my goal,” he said of playing in the NFL. “I never saw myself doing anything else. I feel fortunate I was right, looking back. It might not have been the most educated plan, but I’m glad I felt that way about it. Having that confidence helped me.”

It’s a plan that took root in a hardscrabble but picture-pretty town of Aurora, Ill., about 40 miles west of Chicago, where a mom had a plan of her own. The mom gives credit to so many - grandparents and teachers and coaches. The son is thankful for that support system as well. But he makes it clear there was a force at the center of his universe. “It was mostly my mom,” English said. “She put us before things she might have wanted.”

PFT.com reports that the Chargers have come to terms with 5th round pick Brandon Hughes:

The Chargers have signed cornerback Brandon Hughes. Hughes, a fifth-round draft pick from Oregon State, has signed a four-year deal. The Chargers have seven unsigned draft picks, including first-round defensive end/linebacker Larry English.

Football Outsiders has out their list of “The Top 10 unfilled roster holes,” and the Chargers make the list with their unsettled RT spot. Here’s the story:

5. San Diego Chargers: Right Tackle

Incumbent Jeromey Clary was tied for the league lead for right tackles with eight sacks allowed a year ago, while the team was 17th in the league running at right tackle and 15th running at right end. That’s average, but it shouldn’t be enough for Clary to keep his job without competition.

From: AP

The Chargers today rejected a developer’s proposal to build a $1 billion stadium as part of a redevelopment of the land surrounding Qualcomm Stadium, saying the project would be too enormous for the Mission Valley site.

Hours before Perry Dealy publicly unveiled the project, attorney Mark Fabiani sent the developer a letter saying the team doesn’t think it has a realistic chance and asking him to stop referring to the Chargers in promoting the project.

“We did it reluctantly,” Fabiani told The Associated Press.

Southern California’s only NFL team has said since 2002 that it needs a new stadium to remain financially competitive with other franchises. Three years ago the Chargers gave up on their own plans for a stadium at the Qualcomm site, but Dealy crafted a new proposal anyway, despite Fabiani’s warning to him in January that the team spent several years and millions of dollars trying to make a project there work, said Fabiani, the team’s lead negotiator on the stadium issue.

Dealy’s proposal, called The River Park at Mission Valley, would include a 70,000-seat stadium, 3.76 million square feet of office space in 11 buildings, a 16-story hotel, nearly 6,000 residential units, 500,000 square feet of retail space and 14,000 parking spaces.

Fabiani called Dealy’s project “fantastical,” with “mythical skyscrapers, mythical prices and a mythical stadium.”

Fabiani said he was surprised Dealy went ahead with the news conference.

“It was not, in our view, a productive situation, for the simple reason that the project is as predicted, so dense that it’s never going to be built,” Fabiani said. “We’re a lot closer to the end of the process than we are the beginning, and for those people who care about finding a solution, we shouldn’t be spending time on stuff that has zero chance of actually happening.”

The Chargers still hope to use a similar but smaller development, plus public land, as a way to build a stadium. Fabiani said the team believes such a project would require two parcels of land, one for the stadium and another for the commercial development to help pay for it.

Join Matt Loede with this very special edition of Gridiron Gabbin! In this edition, Matt is joined by Chargers starting QB Philip Rivers. Matt and Philip talk about the changes in the AFC West, the situation with L.T., the AFL celebrating their 50th anniversary, and the Chargers outlook for 2009. Join Matt as he chats with Philip Rivers in this Gridiron Gabbin!