On the topic of last season, Brandon Flowers sounds the way a prisoner might after an expired sentence, shaking his head as armed guards escort him beyond the penitentiary walls, leading him back to free air.

The bad knee. The distracted mind. The poor play.

He processes the time served.

“I ain’t going back there,” Flowers said.


The Chargers cornerback is coming off what he considers the worst season of his career. It’d be one thing for him to say it’s behind him. Where Flowers inspires belief is how he’s dedicated himself this offseason, targeting a return to Pro Bowl form.

San Diego hasn’t seen him like this.

At voluntary workouts, Flowers has sprinted around, chest and neck puffing from his shirt with single-digit body fat percentage. Usually, spring is when he wilts, arriving at workouts less Strongman and more Doughboy. Such was the case last year when, following a fat, four-year, $36.4 million contract, he showed up with an equally pudgy physique.


The look wasn’t just unbecoming.

It became him.

“I had a dad bod coming in last year,” said Flowers, who became a first-time father. “What my girl was eating when she was pregnant, I was eating also. I definitely came in, I want to say, 10 to 12 pounds heavier than what I am now. I was just feeling like I had time to work it off. ‘Oh, this is OTAs. I can get to it.’ And I didn’t even practice in OTAs last year because that weight was bothering me, causing different issues such as my back and putting more weight on my rehabbing knee.

“Once you trigger one thing, a lot of things start to go. I started off bad last year, and it just kept on going downhill.”


Here, a preface should be inserted.

Offseason articles notoriously document how much better of shape a player is in physically. In some cases, like that of Chargers outside linebacker Melvin Ingram and wide receiver Keenan Allen in 2015, it translates onto the field. In others, like inside linebacker Donald Butler last year, it doesn’t.

There is no crystal ball.

That being allowed, Flowers is in a healthy place.


He is back from the knee injury that he says limited him first in the season opener against the Lions. He allowed three touchdown catches the next week in Cincinnati. A week later, he appeared on the injury report on the evening before a Sunday game, ultimately being made inactive in Minnesota and putting a short-handed secondary in a bind.

Today, he can move without thinking about his knee, which landed him on injured reserve last December.

Flowers also is back from circumstances that, he says, he allowed to distract him.

Without going into detail, he acknowledges a failure to compartmentalize his life. What should’ve been left as off-the-field issues affected him on it.


“When I got to the field, to me, looking back at it, I wasn’t all there mentally,” Flowers said. “But that can’t happen. I’m a pro. I’ve got to put stuff aside. When I get onto the field, I’ve got to be full-go. Now, I just won’t go back.”

Flowers saw the shape Ingram was in last season before totaling a career-high 10 1/2 sacks.

He pursued the trainer largely responsible, meeting with Miami-based David Alexander, owner of DBC Fitness, for a consultation. Alexander’s clientele also includes NBA stars LeBron James and Dwyane Wade.

Alexander said that he took on Flowers because the 30-year-old told him he wanted to return to the Pro Bowl.


“He was all in,” Alexander said. “We could’ve told him to eat a brick, and he’d eat a brick. He was a complete sponge to everything I was giving him. ... I have a test-out process, especially with our NFL guys. It’s a workout that, basically, we can gauge what type of shape they get in. He blew that (whole) workout out of the water. It was to a point afterward where I pulled him aside and said, ‘Listen, if I put 20 guys through that workout, 18 will tap out on it. They don’t make it to the fourth round.’ And he blew the fourth round out of the water.

“That’s when I said, ‘I don’t expect anything less than the Pro Bowl from you this year.’”

Last year is over.

Gone.


“It was a horrible year,” Flowers said. “It is what it is. I’m not a sensitive guy when it comes to what happens on the field. To me, last year was unacceptable. But I had to get it out of my head. I knew what kind of place I was in last year, and I just can’t go back to where I was. It’s erased.”

His time is served.