Good morning.

You’ll get no beef from Tom Telesco that the upcoming draft tees up in a fat way for the Chargers.

On top of owning the No. 3 pick, Telesco has seven other chips.

Talent, he said, runs “very deep” in this year’s draft pool.


“It works well for us,” he told Chargers flagship 1360 AM Thursday. “We pick high in every round.”

The talent man said the bulk of draft prep is behind the Chargers, but going toward the April 28-30 event “there’s still some work to be done” at pro days. The team is still collecting medical and character-related intel on draft prospects.

“We certainly don’t know today what we’re going to do at pick three,” he said.

As for the draft charts that teams use to calculate trade values, Telesco said teams vary in the points they assign to each slot.


In the wake of the free-agent market playing out in recent weeks, he can still be “pretty broad-based” in terms of surveying the draft field at many positions.

• Talking about the prospect of a Chargers stadium downtown, Councilman Scott Sherman struck a skeptical tone in several comments to the team’s flagship.

Of the plan to combine the convention center with a stadium, Sherman said, “Where those have been tried in other parts of the country, they have been terrible failures.”

He reiterated his belief that pursuing a Mission Valley site would provide the “easiest path to victory with the voters” due to the team’s Valley ties that date to 1967 and city ownership of the land.


Sherman called downtown “the path of a lot of resistance.”

• Former Chargers head coach Al Saunders is part of the Cleveland Browns offensive staff that will try to turn around quarterback Robert Griffin III.

The Chargers dearly want the Browns to pick a quarterback second overall. Quarterback, lineman, whatever -- history says the Browns will louse up the pick.

Older Bolts fans will recall Saunders as the man who replaced Don Coryell after owner Alex Spanos fired Coryell during the 1986 season.


Spanos took a liking to Saunders, a Chargers receivers coach who had a clean-cut look and wore a tie to work. Schmoozing the top boss wasn’t a Coryell speciality. Saunders, the first head coach hired under Spanos, would follow Coryell out the door two-and-half years later with a 17-22 record. He never again head-coached a team, though he has worked as an NFL aide every season since his dismissal.

The Saunders Era was not without colorful moments.

Circa 1987, when football writers staged a fantasy league draft adjacent to Chargers offices at Jack Murphy Stadium, Saunders made a brief appearance.

The head coach inquired if any Chargers had been drafted.


“Not yet, Al,” said San Diego Union beat writer Jerry Magee, “but we’re only in the seventh round.”

Previewing a game against the hated but more talented Raiders, Saunders made a memorable on-the-record comment to the assembled media. Commenting on the gap in player talent, he said, “Who would you rather go to war with – the Raiders or the Chargers?” Alex Spanos was not amused.

Saunders, 69, has coached in every year since joining John McKay’s USC staff in 1970. His employers included five universities. The Browns are his seventh NFL team.

(Correction: Scott Sherman was misidentified as Rep. Scott Peters in an earlier version of this story.)