Everybody has a type.
With the on-field portion of the 2023 NFL Scouting Combine set to start on Thursday, we’re taking a look at the Chargers’ types. Today, we’ll take a look at general manager Tom Telesco.
As general manager since 2013, Telesco has a decade of drafts to draw info from, with 68 non-specialist draft picks in those years.
First Round Athleticism
The Chargers have made 11 first round picks in Telesco’s tenure as general manager, with two coming in 2020 when the team selected both Justin Herbert and Kenneth Murray.
Apart from 2013 first rounder DJ Fluker, every Chargers first round pick has had a Relative Athletic Score of at least 7.24. Remove Mike Williams, who did not run the 3 cone or shuttle drills, and that number jumps to 8.74. Since 2019, the lowest RAS score of a Chargers first round pick has been 9.70, and that was Herbert.
Basically, as a rule of thumb: you better be a top-flight athlete if you’re going to be a Charger on Thursday night of the draft.
Quarterback
Beyond Justin Herbert, Telesco has only drafted two other quarterbacks: fifth rounder Easton Stick in 2019 and seventh rounder Brad Sorensen in 2013.
What sticks out is how strongly Telesco’s front office seems to have embraced the shift to athletic quarterbacks along with the rest of the league. Sorensen logged a RAS score of just 5.10 as a more prototypical pocket passer, but both Stick and Herbert clocked in well over 9.
The interesting thing here is also that Telesco has not been shy about spending Day 3 picks on quarterbacks from smaller schools. Both Stick (North Dakota State) and Sorensen (Southern Utah) came from FCS schools as passers the Chargers intended to develop. Shepherd’s Tyson Bagent is the lone small school QB at this year’s combine.
Wide Receiver
Remove Keenan Allen, who did not test before the 2013 draft, and Telesco has selected six wide receivers in his tenure as general manager. It’ll disappoint Chargers fans to know that the fastest of those six was 2014 seventh rounder Tevin Reese, who ran a 4.46 second 40 yard dash.
Beyond speed, the general trend again seems to be athleticism. Of the four receivers selected in Day 3, three clocked an RAS score of 8.99 or higher: Reese, Joe Reed, and Dylan Cantrell. The one exception is 2020 seventh rounder KJ Hill, who scored 3.89.
Only three of the six receivers that tested ran the 3 cone drill, but all three that did came in under 7 seconds.
Offensive Line
Counting 2013 first round pick DJ Fluker and 2022 sixth rounder Jamaree Salyer as tackles (both played tackle in college and ended up playing some tackle in the NFL), all five tackles Telesco has drafted have had arms measuring at least 33 inches.
This arm length requirement doesn’t seem to extend to interior players – five guards or centers drafted by the Chargers since 2013 have had arms under 33 inches. Center Scott Quessenberry, drafted in the fifth round in 2018, is the only player to have arms shorter than 32 inches.
Telesco also seems to resist the compulsion to draft massive offensive linemen. The tallest of the 13 linemen the Chargers have selected is Trey Pipkins, who measured in at 6’6 1/8″ in 2019. The heaviest was Fluker at 339 pounds. What this tells me is that Telesco generally prefers linemen with movement abilities rather than mountainous size. As such, players like Ohio State’s Dawand Jones may not be on the table for the Chargers come April.
Pass Rusher
Brandon Staley prefers length in his pass rushers, and Tom Telesco is no different. Of the five rushers he’s drafted to the Chargers since 2013, all of them have had arms of at least 33 inches.
Three of the four pass rushers drafted by Telesco who tested (Chris Rumph only benched in 2021) ran the 40 yard dash in 4.65 or faster while weighing 252 pounds at maximum. The one exception on both counts is 2016 third overall pick Joey Bosa, who ran a 4.86 at 269 pounds but had the production profile and agility testing to make up for it.
The three pass rushers drafted in the first two rounds (Bosa, Uchenna Nwosu, and Jeremiah Attaochu) have all logged an RAS score of at least 8.33. Rumph and 2019 sixth rounder Emeke Egbule were at 5.10 and 7.27, respectively, but keep in mind again that Rumph did not participate in most of the testing. As such, it’s reasonable to expect that an RAS score of about 7 is Telesco’s threshold for the Chargers.
Defensive Back
Only three of the thirteen defensive backs selected by Telesco have had RAS scores under 7: 2017 fifth rounder Desmond King, whose score was heavily impacted by his smaller stature, 2020 sixth rounder Alohi Gilman, who attended Telesco’s favorite school Notre Dame, and 2021 seventh rounder Mark Webb, whose versatility outweighed his pedestrian athleticism.
Telesco’s draft tendencies at defensive back also seem to follow a general pattern by round. Both first rounders, Jason Verrett and Derwin James, had an RAS over 9.3 and jumped at least 39 inches in the vertical and 10 feet, 8 inches in the broad.
Head to the second round, and both Nasir Adderley and Asante Samuel Jr. have scores in the 7s. By the middle rounds, Telesco boomerangs back to elite athletes, selecting Craig Mager (9.81), JT Woods (9.44), and Rayshawn Jenkins (9.42). From the fifth round onward, the pattern gets much less discernable.
Chargers defensive backs also generally need to have at least average times in the shuttle. Two of the four slowest shuttle times came from 2022 picks Ja’Sir Taylor and Deane Leonard, both at 4.25 seconds, roughly 59th percentile.
