San Diego Chargers Daily Links: February 19, 2016

Chargers' Jason Verrett energized by Pro Bowl, ready for leadership role - Eric Williams
"It changes a lot because you’re around the best of the best as far as athletes," Verrett said. "For you to be selected as one only motivates you, and that’s the type of guy I am. I don’t really like to let a lot of things go to my head. I like to use it as motivation."

Mel Kiper's 2016 NFL Mock Draft 2.0 - Mel Kiper Jr. (insider)
If Tunsil is still available here, the Chargers would have a tough time passing on him, given the mess that has been their offensive line over the past few seasons. Buckner and Joey Bosa are going to grade out similarly, so it's more about preference and fit. That said, Buckner fits pretty much everywhere.

The Complete History Of The NFL - Reuben Fischer-Baum & Nate Silver
How do you rate an NFL team across decades of play? One method is Elo, a simple measure of strength based on game-by-game results. We calculated Elo ratings for every game in league history — over 30,000 ratings in total.

Philip Rivers 'fired up' for Chargers' young nucleus - Chris Wesseling
"I'm excited about the young guys we have who are becoming our core guys," Rivers said. "Verrett, those inside linebackers, I could go on and on. I'm excited about what that new core is becoming on defense."

Modeling success for running back draft prospects - Kevin Cole
As you’d expect, the model favors younger prospects, and those with lots of rushing touchdowns and receiving yards. This might seems like a an overly simplistic model, but simplicity should be the goal of every model, as long as you’re not severely compromising accuracy. The model’s accuracy rate for correctly predicted early NFL success or failure on the test set was nearly 85 percent, roughly equal to using NFL draft position as the independent variable.