SAN DIEGO -- In an attempt to improve the overall health and safety of his players, San Diego Chargers head coach Mike McCoy said his team will change how they do things on the field this offseason.

And that includes an emphasis on shoulder tackling.

“That’s one thing we’ve done a lot of work on,” McCoy said. “And you’re going to see a couple new things out there this year, and some different ways to work on tackling. We’re working -- doing a lot of research on some new drills and asking around the league how they do certain things to help our football team.”

According to PBS “Frontline” Concussion Watch, the Chargers finished tied for the league lead in concussions with 16. Of course, this number does not include the many concussions in practice and games that go unreported.

"The big thing is to be fundamentally sound and technically right when you can," head coach Mike McCoy said of the Chargers' emphasis on shoulder tackling. AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack

Unique for the Chargers is they had four offensive linemen (Orlando Franklin, D.J. Fluker, King Dunlap, Chris Watt) miss a combined nine games due to concussions.

According to Football Outsiders, the Chargers were No. 6 in the NFL in adjusted games lost due to injury in 2015.

Former NFL quarterback Warren Moon is an advocate for Practice Like Pros, an organization focused on doing less hitting in practice at all levels of football. Moon suffered his first concussion in youth football at 11 years old, and had six more throughout his football playing career, which included 17 years in the NFL.

Moon points to how the Seattle Seahawks teach tackling fundamentals and colleges like Dartmouth have eliminated live tackling in practice as progressive ways teams are working to make the game safer.

The Ivy League banned live tackling in practice during the regular season.

“It doesn’t mean that you never have contact,” Moon said. “But you limit the number of minutes that you have live drills in practice, and the rest of the time you’re teaching fundamentals.

“That’s the way the game should be taught. Any way you don’t have to kill guys every day in practice, beat guys up and have all of these collisions that they used to have in the old days, you’ve just got to change your mentality a little bit in how you do things.”

Seahawks coach Pete Carroll and defensive assistant Rocky Seto created leverage-based, shoulder tackling methods that attempt to take the head out of the hit. Check out this video.

The fundamentals are based on rugby tackling -- track the near hip, target the thigh and hit with the leveraged shoulder.

“In the times that we're in and the discussion we’re in about safety, it just made sense to point out to other people that there are techniques in the game that may promote a safer approach,” Carroll said. “And the reason we brought it up is we thought other people needed to know it.”

Carroll has had members of his coaching tree continue that tackling philosophy around the league.

Former Seahawks defensive coordinator Gus Bradley teaches that philosophy as the head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars. Bradley said he brought in a rugby coach to study the team’s film and look for opportunities to teach the shoulder-tackling approach.

“Sometimes in a small area, it happens so fast that it’s hard,” Bradley said. “But corners, safeties and linebackers sometimes in pursuit plays, there’s a lot of opportunities there to take your head out of the game. So you’ll see us teach it even more now.”

Just like Bradley, former Seattle defensive coordinator Dan Quinn has adopted a similar approach as the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons. And Quinn believes coaching that technique in practice and performing it in games has cut down on concussions.

“It’s something that we’re looking at as a league overall,” Quinn said. “It’s more than just keeping your head up. When you take your head out of the game by using your shoulder, you can still be really physical and not have to hit them with the crown of your helmet.

“You can be really physical by the speed and the impact that you’re running at a guy with, drilling him with your shoulder as opposed to the top of your head.”

Like these other teams, McCoy said tackling fundamentals will be a daily thing his team works on this offseason.

“The big thing is to be fundamentally sound and technically right when you can,” McCoy said. “Every tackle is different. There’s a different approach angle, there’s a different speed for the runner and how you try and get that guy down.

“Those big, physical runners -- if you get run over a few times early on, you start trying to think how am I going to get this guy down? But it’s critical for the health and safety of the game to use the right technique.”