Chargers Clips
The 2026 offseason opened with questions about wide receiver Quentin Johnston’s future with the Chargers, but the season will kick off without the same kind of uncertainty.
Chargers General Manager Joe Hortiz shot down trade rumors early in the offseason and the team deepened its commitment to the wideout by exercising their option on his contract for 2027. The move guarantees Johnston $18 million for that season and the announcement came amid of flurry of positive comments about the receiver from head coach Jim Harbaugh and offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel.
As the offseason program came to an end, Johnston discussed how much he valued those signs of belief from the team.
“It means a lot,” Johnston said, via the team’s website. “With that validation comes a little relief for myself, a weight I have previous years on my shoulders about how I was playing and what’s going to come after that if I don’t change. Like I said, I’ve been working as hard as I can the past few years, end up getting that validation now.”
Johnston has 16 touchdown catches over the last two years and he set a career high with 735 receiving yards in 2025. That trajectory validated the Chargers’ decision to use a first-round pick on Johnston and continued progress should put him in line for an even longer stay in Los Angeles.
The offseason programs around the league have largely wrapped up for 2026, with players and coaches around the league now experiencing some time off.
But training camps are just a few weeks away from opening.
The NFL announced the camp report dates for all 32 teams on Monday, with the first ones opening up in less than a month.
Below are the camp locations and report dates:
Arizona Cardinals: State Farm Stadium | Rookies: 7/22 | Veterans 7/22
Atlanta Falcons: Atlanta Falcons Training Facility | Rookies: 7/24 | Veterans: 7/28
Baltimore Ravens: Under Armour Performance Center | Rookies: 7/24 | Veterans: 7/28
Buffalo Bills: St. John Fisher University | Rookies: 7/21 | Veterans: 7/28
Carolina Panthers: Bank of America Stadium | Rookies: 7/21 | Veterans: 7/22
Chicago Bears: Halas Hall | Rookies: 7/25 | Veterans: 7/28
Cincinnati Bengals: Paycor Stadium | Rookies: 7/25 | Veterans: 7/28
Cleveland Browns: CrossCountry Mortgage Campus | Rookies: 7/23 | Veterans: 7/28
Dallas Cowboys: Marriott Residence Inn Oxnard | Rookies: 7/28 | Veterans: 7/28
Denver Broncos: Broncos Park Powered by CommonSpirit | Rookies: 7/22 | Veterans: 7/28
Detroit Lions: Meijer Performance Center | Rookies: 7/25 | Veterans: 7/28
Green Bay Packers: Lambeau Field | Rookies: 7/27 | Veterans: 7/28
Houston Texans: Houston Methodist Training Center | Rookies: 7/21 | Veterans: 7/28
Indianapolis Colts: Grand Park | Rookies: 7/27 | Veterans: 7/28
Jacksonville Jaguars: Miller Electric Center | Rookies: 7/25 | Veterans: 7/28
Kansas City Chiefs: Missouri Western State University | Rookies: 7/28 | Veterans: 7/28
Las Vegas Raiders: Intermountain Health Performance Center | Rookies: 7/23 | Veterans: 7/28
Los Angeles Chargers: The Bolt | Rookies: 7/23 | Veterans: 7/28
Los Angeles Rams: Loyola Marymount University | Rookies: 7/25 | Veterans: 7/25
Miami Dolphins: Baptist Health Training Complex | Rookies: 7/21 | Veterans: 7/28
Minnesota Vikings: TCO Performance Center | Rookies: 7/26 | Veterans: 7/28
New England Patriots: New Balance Athletics Center | Rookies: 7/21 | Veterans: 7/24
New Orleans Saints: Ochsner Sports Performance Center | Rookies: 7/28 | Veterans: 7/28
New York Giants: Quest Diagnostics Training Center/The Greenbrier | Rookies: 7/23 | Veterans: 7/28
New York Jets: Athletic Health Jets Training Center | Rookies: 7/25 | Veterans: 7/28
Philadelphia Eagles: Jefferson Health Training Complex | Rookies: 7/28 | Veterans: 7/28
Pittsburgh Steelers: Saint Vincent College | Rookies: 7/28 | Veterans: 7/28
San Francisco 49ers: SAP Performance Facility | Rookies: 7/18 | Veterans: 7/25
Seattle Seahawks: Virginia Mason Athletic Center | Rookies: 7/17 | Veterans: 7/24
Tampa Bay Buccaneers: AdventHealth Training Center | Rookies: 7/27 | Veterans: 7/28
Tennessee Titans: Vanderbilt Health Football Center | Rookies: 7/23 | Veterans: 7/28
Washington Commanders: Commanders Park | Rookies: 7/24 | Veterans: 7/28
The NFL has announced the full list of joint practices that will take place during training camps this summer.
The first set of them will take place on August 11 in four different locations. The Cowboys and Rams will practice in Los Angeles, the Colts will visit the Patriots, the Bucs will work out at the Jets’ facility and the Titans will go to Santa Clara to practice with the 49ers.
All in all, there will be 28 teams working in joint sessions in August. The Lions, Steelers, Chiefs and Broncos are the teams that will not hold joint practices.
The full list of joint practices is below with the host team listed second. If there are multiple practices scheduled, the date of the first practice is listed.
August 11 — Cowboys-Rams; Colts-Patriots; Buccaneers-Jets; Titans-49ers.
August 12 — Dolphins-Commanders.
August 13 — Jaguars-Saints.
August 18 — 49ers-Chargers; Raiders-Texans; Saints-Cowboys.
August 19 — Falcons-Colts; Ravens-Vikings; Panthers-Jaguars; Eagles-Patriots.
August 20 — Bills-Browns; Bears-Bengals; Saints-Rams; Giants-Dolphins.
August 21 — Seahawks-Titans.
August 25 — Buccaneers-Jaguars.
August 26 — Cardinals-Packers; Texans-Panthers; Commanders-Ravens.
August 27 — Bears-Titans.
Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert’s bid to change his footwork to better fit into offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel’s scheme has been of note this offseason, but McDaniel’s arrival effects more than just the quarterback.
McDaniel’s offenses in Miami created a lot of big plays out of the backfield for De’Von Achane and that’s something Chargers running back Omarion Hampton picked up on while doing research into what expect from the coach. Now that he’s spent an offseason learning what McDaniel has planned for him and the team’s other backs, Hampton is enthusiastic about what the future holds.
“All the running backs like it a lot,” Hampton said, via the team’s website. “It’s just figuring it out, the details of it. It’s going to be super good for us.”
McDaniel’s arrival isn’t the only reason to feel better about the Chargers offense in 2025 — the offensive line should be healthier and tight end David Njoku gives them another weapon in the passing game — but it is the biggest one and it’s clear that Hampton thinks it is going to be of particular benefit to his growth in his second NFL season.
A year after Philip Rivers returned to the NFL at the age of 44, could Drew Brees do it at 47?
Asked on Bussin’ With The Boys if he could still make it happen, Brees said his throwing arm is so shot after his long NFL career that he now throws better with his left arm.
“I would know where to throw it, I just don’t know if I could get it there,” Brees said. “That’s one lingering effect from the shoulder surgery. I don’t throw with my right arm anymore. I actually throw left handed. I started doing that toward the end of my career with my kids, because I’d come home after a long day of practice, I didn’t have anything left in my right arm, but the boys wanted to play catch so I’d throw left handed. I’m pretty mean inside 30 with this left arm.”
Few arms have thrown as many footballs as Brees’ right arm, as he retired with more than 10,000 NFL pass attempts, plus another 2,000 or so in high school and college, and many thousands in practice. Now his left arm is getting the work — but not at a level that would allow him to play as a 47-year-old.
The Chargers completed their draft class, signing fourth-round wide receiver Brenen Thompson, the team announced Thursday.
The Chargers previously signed first-round edge Akheem Mesidor, second-round center Jake Slaughter, fourth-round offensive tackle Travis Burke, fourth-round safety Genesis Smith, fifth-round defensive tackle Nick Barrett, sixth-round offensive guard Logan Taylor and sixth-round offensive tackle Alex Harkey.
Thompson set a single-season record at Mississippi State with an SEC-leading 1,054 yards and six touchdowns on 57 receptions. He earned second-team All-SEC honors.
He joined Mississippi State after playing two seasons at Oklahoma (2023-24) and a year at Texas (2022).
In 30 career games with the Bulldogs, Sooners and Longhorns, Thompson totaled 1,557 receiving yards and 10 touchdowns on 84 receptions.
Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert’s preparation for his first season playing for offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel has featured increased focus on his footwork during spring practices.
Herbert said that he has taken that approach because the offense calls for him to get the ball out faster than in past seasons and one of the tweaks has been lining up in the shotgun with his left foot forward rather than his right. On Wednesday, McDaniel said that Herbert’s willingness to embrace new ways of doing things means they can “change things that have been standardized in their game for years and you can do it with reasonable expectations and higher performance.”
McDaniel said that moves like that are about “trying to find the margins” that can push Herbert to a higher plane as a player.
“It wasn’t like I was trying fix something that was like, ‘This is broke,’” McDaniel said, via the team’s website. “We’re looking at a player that is very, very talented and top tier in achievement his whole career. [We want to] try to take him to the next level where he can own certain things and really get the ball to his teammates as fast as possible and help efficiency of the offense.”
Herbert’s numbers over his first six seasons support the idea that his game was not in need of major repairs, but the team hasn’t found the same kind of success in the postseason. Bringing in McDaniel is designed to help on that front and the work to do it is going on well ahead of Week 1.
Justin Herbert will be throwing passes during all of the Chargers’ minicamp practices this week, but wide receiver Ladd McConkey isn’t going to be catching many of them.
McConkey was working on the side at Tuesday’s practice and head coach Jim Harbaugh said that the wideout is working through something when he spoke to the media at a press conference. McConkey had his own session with reporters later in the day and said that he strained his hamstring earlier in the offseason program.
McConkey said, via multiple reporters, that he doesn’t have any serious concern about the injury and that he expects to be ready to go for training camp.
McConkey had 66 catches for 789 yards in 2025 after posting 82 catches for 1,149 yards as a rookie. The hope is that Mike McDaniel’s arrival as offensive coordinator will send his numbers in a more positive direction in 2026.
Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert missed some of the team’s voluntary workouts this spring and worked on a modified schedule in some of the practices he attended, but he’ll be back in a more familiar routine at minicamp this week.
Head coach Jim Harbaugh said on Tuesday that Herbert will be throwing at each of the team’s practices this week. Herbert had been taking a day a week to focus solely on footwork during OTAs with the goal of speeding up his release and Harbaugh indicated that this week’s schedule is designed to make sure the quarterback is ready to hit the ground running this summer.
“We got a plan,” Harbaugh said, via Kris Rhim of ESPN.com. “We got a nice progression where he’s ramping up to training camp and the first game of the season and the entire season. So he’s in a ramp up.”
The change in Herbert’s practice work came in Mike McDaniel’s first offseason as the team’s offensive coordinator and the Chargers will be hoping that his labor translates into their first playoff win since the 2018 season.
Friday night’s World Cup match between the United States and Paraguay looked great. Most of the images from the 4-1 U.S. win didn’t look anything like the stadium in which it was played.
But it was indeed SoFi Stadium. With rich, lush, naturally green grass.
“Wonder if we could get that all season,” 49ers tight end George Kittle said on Twitter.
Although the 49ers’ annual visit to their home away from home to play the Rams won’t happen this year (they’ll square off in Australia), the 49ers will be at SoFi Stadium to play the Chargers in Week 15, for a Thursday night game.
Friday night’s soccer match showed what SoFi could be, what it would be, if Rams owner Stan Kroenke were to embrace grass.
But he won’t. It costs too much money to maintain a high-quality grass field. It complicates the effort to have all sorts of other events at the venue.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones made that point earlier this year, regarding his no-questions-asked willingness to install grass at AT&T Stadium for the World Cup.
“We have more flexibility with the way we handle our surface at the stadium,” Jones said at the annual meetings in Phoenix, via Jordan Raanan of ESPN. “We have no belief that it’s any safer to play on a grass [field] or a turf. We are ambiguous as to the safety of it. The turf, actually like many things, improves the economics of being able to play this game and our players are the biggest benefactor of all. They get the best benefit of when we do good things financially, the players are benefiting. So I’m working for you, baby, OK, if you’re a player.
“And so the combination of that, I’m very comfortable putting some grass down for soccer under regulations and proud to be able to do it but quickly get that turf back out there to go about the other business of the stadium and the team.”
The safety narrative is a weak one. The NFL has muddied the issue by focusing on the statistical claim that the injury rate is the same on grass as it is on turf. This ignores player experience beyond the question of actual injuries. The human body takes less wear and tear when the forces it creates are absorbed by a grass field than when the forces ricochet back into the feet and up through the legs.
Besides, how does Jerry Jones hosting a bunch of other events in a football stadium benefit the football players on the Cowboys? At best, it gives him more money to pay players. In a salary-capped environment, however, who cares? The TV money and the ticket revenue from the football games gives owners more than enough money to finance the roster.
The simple reality is that the overwhelming majority of players — 92 percent — prefer grass.
“I’m going into year 10, and I can say wholeheartedly that grass feels way better than turf,” Giants offensive lineman Jermaine Eluemunor recently said, via Rohan Nadkarni of NBC News. “With MetLife getting grass, obviously it’s cool for FIFA and the World Cup. It’s one of the biggest stages in the world but, at the same time, the NFL as a whole is one of the most profitable businesses in the world, and so you would think that us as players would have a say in the fields that we get to play on.”
The players do have a say. In an environment of collective bargaining, however, they need to be willing to give something up to get something else. When the original artificial turf — a thin sheet of green all-weather carpet rolled over concrete — began to proliferate, the NFL Players Association allowed it. The owners secured the discretion to choose the playing surface without any real pushback.
Now that the pushback is happening, the only path for making high-quality grass universal comes from bargaining for it. And, if need be, going on strike to get it.
It all comes back to the fundamental imbalance between management and labor in pro football. The owners will shut the sport down to get what they want. The players won’t.
If the choice is football on artificial turf or no football at all, the players will choose football on artificial turf. And the owners will ignore the P.R. complications flowing from the hypocrisy of writing a blank check for FIFA, because at the end of the day it’s all just words. Until the words are backed up by actions, nothing will change.
Hell, Jones probably likes the fact that the grass vs. turf debate exists. His view is that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. And so, on top of the fact that Jones and other owners make more money from staging their teams’ games on turf, the organic debate over an inorganic playing surface becomes another twist in the ultimate reality show.
And it’s a twist with no stakes. Unless and until the NFLPA is willing to do something other than create public pressure at which the owners won’t even blink, the back-and-forth over turf vs. grass will be nothing but noise.
So that’s the real question. Will the players simply talk about their preference for grass or, when the current Collective Bargaining Agreement expires in 2031, will they do something about it?
Given that most of the men who’ll be playing pro football in 2031 are currently in college or high school, it’s way too early to know the choice they’ll make. History, however, tells us that the decision between playing on artificial turf and not playing at all will be a no-brainer.
In the interim, is it possible that the players could emerge from talks over an expanded season with universal grass fields? Yes. To get there, however, they may have to be willing to go not from 17 regular-season games to 18 but from 17 to 20.
