Chargers veteran Antonio Gates can relate to rookie Joey Bosa, Gates having missed part of training camp 11 years ago due to his own contractual impasse with Team Spanos.

Ultimately, Gates forged a belief about these snafus.

“My advice to any player that’s going through any kind of contract situation is that, at one point, you’ve got to be a man and you’ve got to understand that you’ve got to get ready to play,” he said Monday.

Recalling August 2005, Gates said he played a big role in breaking his own logjam.


“Eventually, I ended up saying, ‘I need to get ready,’ ” said Gates, who had caught passes from amateur quarterbacks while his agent sought a multi-year deal. “To me, it meant a lot for me to go out and perform.”

He offered similar comments when talking generally about stalemates between team and player.

“Sometimes you’ve got to just, as a man, you’ve got to step in and say, ‘This is what it’s going to be,’ ” he said. “Because sometimes, whether or not (there is) miscommunication with the general manager or the agent, whatever it is, at the end of the day, it’s your life, it’s your career.

“And you kind of know what’s best for you, and you know what you need. You still have to have that tunnel vision of being able to go out and perform at the highest level. So, to me, that was always the determining factor when I had issues.”


The impasse between a Chargers front office headed by Dean Spanos and A.J. Smith, and the Gates camp, backfired for both team and player.

It was Aug. 22 when the two agreed to a one-year contract for $380,000.

Because the deal got done too late to beat a deadline the Chargers had set, the team suspended Gates three games.

Minus Gates, whose 13 touchdown catches in 2004 had set an NFL record for tight ends, San Diego lost its season opener to the Cowboys by four points. Five Chargers passes went to replacement tight end Justin Peelle, who caught two for a total of minus-4 yards.


Gates, whose suspension also cost him two preseason games, said he was “rusty in a sense” when he made his season debut the following week. The Chargers would lose again, by three points to Denver.

The two losses loomed large at season’s end, when a 9-7 record wasn’t good enough to get a playoff berth.

Five years later, a similar outcome stung the 2010 Chargers, who narrowly missed the playoffs in the same season that two of their offense’s starters, Marcus McNeill and Vincent Jackson, sat out games due to contractual issues.

Six years later, it’s Bosa whose in contractual limbo, four months after going third overall in the draft.


× Chargers fans gather at Microsoft Store in Fashion Valley to meet defensive end rookie Joey Bosa who was picked by the Chargers at No. 3 overall in the 2016 NFL Draft.

“Hopefully everything will work itself out with Joey,” Gates said, “and he’ll be here ready to go.”