Chargers coach Brandon Staley came prepared with material for Thursday’s meeting with his loosely organized leadership council—still just three months into the job, the new boss picked about 16 guys based on either their NFL experience or standing on the roster—and the team’s biggest-ticket acquisition of 2021 thus far quickly wound up on the receiving end of it.
Corey Linsley, fresh off seven seasons as a Packer, wasn’t actually on himself last week. But he might as well have been when his old quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, called him out as the one teammate of his that he’d want to compete with on the game show.
“You’re famous this week!” Staley said on the Zoom.
From there, Staley gave veteran defensive tackle Linval Joseph crap about wearing a Chargers shirt into the meeting, saying he brought his apple for the teacher. And at one point, Derwin James mentioned working out with draft prospects nearby in Southern California, and the conversation turned to the star safety’s own assessments on players his team might be looking to add in a few weeks.
“It was just normal ball conversation between players and coaches,” Staley told me Friday, driving north from his office in Orange County up to where his family’s still living, near Thousand Oaks (they’ll move down full-time in May). “It felt good. My takeaway is I felt like a real head coach for the first time. I told them that. I was like, ‘Guys, this is what I’ve dreamt about my whole life, to have this first meeting in front of you guys.’
“On draft day, when people walk across the stage, or they’re at their house, there’s so much emotion. People, they love the NFL draft, because you’re seeing dreams come true right before your eyes. Yesterday was that kind of dream come true for me.”
Of course, Staley never imagined it would happen this way, through a laptop from a head coach’s office sitting in a building that still has all the markings of the league’s year under COVID-19 protocols.
But this is where he is, and where everyone is with offseason programs in mid-April 2021. Those were supposed to start Monday, April 5 for new coaches. Then, the date was moved to April 12. Then, it got moved again to the 19th, which all along had been slated to be the day that teams with returning head coaches could start. So even if things go according to plan, and offseason programs do start next week, the head start new coaches get will be gone.
For now, Staley seems O.K. with that. He and his staff haven’t had any lack of things to do, and that first leadership council meeting, to him, was proof that the Chargers’ new coaches have made progress in one area that’s pretty important to him.
That “normal ball conversation” Staley referenced? It doesn’t happen unless you’ve at least gotten to know the guys a little.
