With the draft only a few weeks away let’s not just look at the obvious-say the possible candidates the Chargers might draft or all the combine measurements and numbers. I always like that sort of information — you know the analytical stuff but let’s face it we all like the stories behind the numbers

The Chargers biggest need is offensive line and by now everyone seems to agree that they will pick offensive guard Chance Warmack from Alabama. I don’t really know if there is such a thing as a —can’t miss— player but if there is its Warmack. Will he still be on the board when the 11th pick comes up? Probably so since most think Lane Johnson from Oklahoma will take the top spot as an offensive linemen simply because tackles are a much hotter commodity than offensive guards. Now back to the entertaining stuff.

Everybody loves a good draft story, I remember mine, kind of, I was hung over at home and got a call from a newspaper asking me what I thought of the Chargers, minutes earlier I saw I was the 8th pick, no call from the Chargers prior, just saw it on TV like everyone else. I had been woken up that morning from my drunken state by a call from Mike Ditka telling me they were trying to secure a deal to draft me that day and he would be in touch, that was the first and last time I ever spoke to Mike Ditka but it wouldn’t be my last Mike Ditka draft story.

In 1990 I was sitting in a hotel room in Hawaii watching it rain and also the NFL draft on ESPN. That year ESPN was profiling Mark Spindler as the 1st round prospect, they would be doing live feeds of him from his dads bar in Scranton PA as he waited to be drafted in the first round. Mark was a former USA today Defensive player of the year in High School and was considered the number one recruit in the nation that year; he started at Pitt as a freshman and also roomed with me so I knew him well.

That day as I watched ESPN I decided to call his dads bar and claim to be Mike Ditka. I spoke and informed him that the Bears would be taking him with their pick. I watched the bar go crazy as he relayed the message and soon ESPN picked up on it, but when the Bears General Manager came up to the podium they instead took Mark Carrier, and a hush came over the Scranton bar. I waited a little while and decided I could do a hick Jerry Glanville voice, so again later in the round the phone rings in the bar and it’s me as Jerry Glanville telling Spindler he’s our man and we need someone like him on our defense, “basically we need a little cream in our coffee down here Mark.” The bar gets crazy only to be let down again when the real Glanville picks and it’s not Mark.

The rain soon stopped and I left my room, in those days we didn’t carry Cell phones so the day was done for me as the Hawaiian Chris Berman of the 1990 draft, I later returned to see that Mark hadn’t been drafted until the 3rd round by the Detroit Lions, maybe it had something to do with the 5.6 forty he ran at the combine that year but like Manti Te’o this year the film usually tells a different story of a players ability than the press does.