Chargers rookie Joey Bosa, no doubt heeding the advice of his legal team, chose to miss a few workdays at Chargers Park this month due to an impasse in contractual talks.

Bosa continued to study his playbook, said friend and teammate Josh Perry.

How important are these nominal football practices in May and June? Chargers coach Mike McCoy, who wears T-shirts that read “Everything Matters,” has cancelled the final practice of spring training each of the last three years.

Significant contact is largely incidental in the spring.


The padded practices in training camp allow intentional contact, which is to say training camp is when the actual football practices start.

Miss those practices, and a rookie will fall behind and perhaps take on greater injury risk, because the only way to get into football shape is to practice and play actual football. July 29 is when Chargers players are to report for practice, and the first workout will be July 30.

As those dates draw close, both sides should feel increasing heat to get a deal done. If, that is, there is heat to be felt.

It’s not 100 percent clear to outsiders what the exact details of disagreement are, but Bosa representative Todd France, in a recent interview with SiriusXM NFL Radio, mentioned familiar items first reported by the U-T’s Michael Gehlken: offset language, deferred money and cash flow.


Time value of money is a legit thing. Especially at millions of dollars. Do you want to get all of your money in this year? Is it going to be spread out of the next two or three years? So those are some of the moving parts. Sometimes it’s easier when you are dealing with teams. And sometimes it’s harder. Again, there’s a lot of moving parts. If it was just a no-brainer type thing, then they would be done in just one second.

Asked if it’s realistic to expect things can be worked out by late July, the agent was non-committal.

We’ll see how it goes. Obviously that’s our goal. I’m sure that’s the team’s goal. But at the end of the day, it’s gotta be right for the player. These guys have one chance. We hope they get to a second contract. But we don’t know if they ever will or not. We want to make sure they’re protected, just as anyone else for any job that they do.

: This should work out. Deadlines spur action. Both Bosa’s camp and the Chargers’ braintrust seemingly appreciate the importance of training camp to getting Bosa’s rookie season off to the best possible start.

If Bosa misses a few days of training camp, he would join a long list of NFL players, past and present, in that category.

However this plays out, Bosa’s devotion to craft and team would be hard to criticize given that both Tom Telesco and Mike McCoy said the defensive end’s football “passion” is one of his special traits. The Chargers invested heavily in Bosa’s football character and overall character when they chose him No. 3 overall in the draft two months ago.