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Chargers in midst of strange offseason as they move to L.A.

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

Albert Breer/Sports Illustrated via MMQB

Chargers coach Anthony Lynn was detailing how he tossed his players into an NFL time machine by putting them through what, by today's standards, would qualify as a spring boot camp. And then, the thought popped in my head: So I guess the idea is when a guy is going through 200- and 300- and 400-yard gassers, it's hard for him to be thinking about where his family's going to be in June, huh?

Lynn laughed and said, “That's a good way to put it.”

The Chargers are about halfway through as strange an offseason as any team, in any sport, in recent memory, has endured. They're now the Los Angeles Chargers, but until the league breaks for summer in late June, the football work is still being done in San Diego. They have a new head coach. They just welcomed in a new rookie class. And all the while, groundwork for the move is being laid 100 miles up the coast.

In fact, on Wednesday, we talked as Lynn was in the middle of a quick trip to Orange County to move some things into his new house and do a site visit on work at the Chargers' Costa Mesa facility, ahead of their July move-in date. The team had OTAs last week, and they'll have OTAs next week, and this was the window for Lynn to knock out a couple off-field items.

This isn't just reality for Lynn in 2017. It's the reality of 2017 for all the Chargers.

“It really wasn't ever an elephant in the room,” Lynn said. “I'm a pretty straight-forward guy. I let these guys know exactly where I stood, what the standard was and what the expectations were, and how we were going to go about doing it. … There's a lot of character on this football team. And that's why I believe this whole process that we could use as an excuse, we won't use it as an excuse.

“I believe that, in a way, it'll galvanize the whole organization and make us even closer and more focused on the task at hand.”

In this week's Game Plan, we're going to look at where the union is on marijuana with four years left on the CBA; why the Raiders believe Derek Carr's in for a big year (which would make it smart to pay him before that); how I can back up the assertion that Giants owner John Mara made to The MMQB's Jenny Vrentas on Colin Kaepernick; and where new Bills GM Brandon Beane has already done impressive work.

We'll start in southern California, and look at how Lynn is distracting his players from the shiny object hovering over them (the move) while working to improve the toughness and health of a team that's lost too many close games (4-9 in one-score games in '16) and has been too injured (26 players finished '16 on IR).

And the way Lynn's approaching that is about as subtle as an uppercut. As the new Chargers boss explains it, the training methods are the type he “was very familiar with growing up.” The owners gave him resources for the overhaul. The weight room has been rebuilt to emphasize power. The conditioning program was flipped on its head to incorporate more arduous, longer-distance running.

Research tells Lynn—as a side benefit to the sort of work that looks awfully Parcellsian from an ex-Tuna assistant—it all lines right up with getting more guys on the field and less in the training room when it counts.

“I don't know if it's old school training; I just think it's basic training,” he said. “Phase I and Phase II (of the program), to me, was just conditioning, a different type of conditioning. We wanted to build a base for our players. In the fourth quarter, we want to be stronger, we want stamina, we don't want to be fatigued. And I know a lot of soft-tissue injuries come from fatigue, not explosive movements.

“And our organization has stepped in big-time to help out with different training tools. We've revamped the strength-and-conditioning area. That thing, you walk in there, it's built for power. It doesn't look like a 24-Hour Fitness. And guys have bought into that direction.”

There's more coming, too.

Lynn acknowledges there's no way to eliminate injuries, but he'll work to try to nip in the bud any hint of a culture where, as he put it, “it's easier to be hurt sometimes.” As such, at camp, you may see training-camp scenes involving injured guys like you used to a decade ago.

“Guys won't be standing around doing nothing, I can promise you that,” Lynn said. “There will bikes on the field at training camp. Yes, there will.”

The overarching theme here takes us back to the top of the story—Lynn wants to take away any excuse that might be sitting there for his first Chargers team, acknowledging there's a pretty easy one to make.

But it goes beyond just the obvious. In fact, when I brought up the talented young core around Philip Rivers, who Lynn calls “exactly what you're looking for in a quarterback,” and mentioned the injuries of the past two years as a reason why the team didn't hit its potential, the coach wasn't having it.

He could've talked about defensive studs Joey Bosa and Melvin Ingram and Denzel Perryman, or offensive breakthrough players Hunter Henry and Melvin Ingram, and explained where all the group could be if it just has a healthier season. But he didn't.

“To me, that's just excuses,” Lynn said. “It's the National Football League, and we're all talented. I mean, this is an elite group of men. I don't think there's a non-talented team in the National Football League. The facts are, and I deal in the currency of the truth, we won nine games the past two years. We're below average. So we have to change some things that we're doing. We have to approach it better. We have to play better.

“And we have elite talent—just like everyone else. What we do with it is what's most important.”

It's important to mention that all of this isn't exactly how Lynn expected it to go. Was the move possible when he took the job in mid-January? Sure. Was it likely? Not as he saw it.

So he's had to adjust on the fly, which is fine with him. And he knows that over the next few months, his team will have to be just as adaptable. Or else they'll risk sinking in circumstances.

“When I took the job, we were still in San Diego. And four days later, we made the decision to move,” Lynn said. “I have to be honest with you, I didn't think we were going to be leaving San Diego. I really didn't. It wouldn't have mattered much. I was looking at the organization and I felt like the organization was a fit for me. But I did have to start thinking about things differently, once we decided we were moving.”

The best way to do that, evidently, has been to bury himself and his team in the kind of football work that's now considered vintage. Unique approach for a unique situation. What comes out of it—based on this most unusual setup for an NFL team's calendar year—is still anyone's guess.

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