Griff Whalen is in college mode this week, a deck of flash cards stacked in the wide receiver’s room. The scene resembles something out of his Stanford dorm days in Palo Alto, as if the product-design major is cramming for a midterm exam.

Whalen is no longer in school.

But a big test, he knows, is coming.

Whalen and running back Dexter McCluster signed with the Chargers this week. Both are expected to be active Sunday against the Colts, meaning they must make every meeting, every practice, every rep count before going to Indianapolis.


Today, they are at different levels of readiness.

Whalen, through no fault of his own, would be the freshman who attended one-third of his lectures. He has some sense of the playbook, given that he spent training camp this summer with Dolphins coach Adam Gase, a former Broncos colleague of Chargers coach Mike McCoy. He’ll need as much study time as possible, however, to be proficient come Sunday.

McCluster, on the other hand, would be a dean’s list student with perfect attendance. This week is less stressful for him.

Hence the flash cards atop Whalen’s desk. On some cards, he has the name of a play written on one side, with the play’s routes and formation drawn on the other.


“I probably have maybe 100. More to go still,” said Whalen, who might not see offensive work Sunday as the No. 4 wide receiver, but has to prepare just the same. “For a new offense like this with new terminology, the first thing I like to do is make flash cards and just go through them over, over and over. And then after that, it’s hearing the plays, either reading them out loud or having someone else read them. And then drawing them up.

“The way these offenses are, you really have to know more than just one position because you’ll run plays out of different formations, different personnel (groupings) and you’ll end up in different spots. It’s just hearing the play and being able to draw up the whole thing.”

Meanwhile, there is McCluster.

He signed on Tuesday, a day after Whalen, and is hardly sweating the playbook.


“For the most part, I pretty much got it down already,” McCluster said.

The difference is that, while Whalen was a Colt from 2013 to 2015 and then a Dolphin, McCluster spent four seasons with the Chiefs and then the last two with the Titans. Chargers offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt was his head coach in Tennessee. Much of the terminology there is the same here.

In May, former Titans quarterback Zach Mettenberger estimated that he knew 95 percent of the playbook the moment he arrived in San Diego.

It is similar for McCluster.


That should prove useful this season. He figures to be more involved in the offense than Whalen, stepping into a key role that was vacated Sunday. Running back Danny Woodhead, who caught a team-high 80 passes for 755 yards in 2015, suffered a torn ACL against the Jaguars.

To say McCluster can step in and “be” Woodhead is unrealistic.

There is faith at Chargers Park, though, that he can at least soften some of the blow from Woodhead’s loss.

So confident was the team in McCluster’s abilities that, McCluster said, the team didn’t even him put him through a workout Tuesday before signing him. The Chargers already had a strong sense of what they were getting.


“I’ve pretty much got the offense down,” McCluster said Wednesday. “Right now, it’s just repetition, being on the same page as the quarterback. I sat in with the offensive line for a short period this morning, just to build that camaraderie, see how I fit in and let them know, ‘Hey, I’m serious about what I’m doing.’ ”

Whalen is serious, too.

He has the flash cards to prove it.

michael.gehlken@sduniontribune.com


Twitter: @SDUTgehlken