San Diego Chargers: Quick hits from day 1 of OTAs

Phase III of the San Diego Chargers' offseason activities got underway yesterday with the first of ten Organized Team Activities (OTAs) taking place. The team had good attendance, however, these are still voluntary activities.

A few reports came out yesterday that highlighted what went down, so let's look at some of those tidbits:

• The Defense definitely won most of the praise yesterday. In 7-on-7 drills, they forced multiple turnovers. Coach Mike McCoy said "The entire defense ran to the ball and got their hands on a number of balls. The turnovers they created today, we need more of it. It's something we haven't done enough of in the past couple years and moving forward it's something we need to do every day."
• 2 of those turnovers came from young players. CB Richard Crawford picked off newly signed QB Zach Mettenberger and 2016 4th round pick LB Joshua Perry also had an interception during 7-on-7's.
• Brandon Flowers, who is trying to have a comeback year after a down year last year, got his hands on a pass as well. Flowers jumped a route against new WR Travis Benjamin but wound up dropping the INT.
• The team did a Periscope of a portion of warm ups and positional drills. It was a fun watch since practice wasn't open to the public. However, an eagle-eyed Garrett Sisti noticed something that we should keep an eye on today. At about the 11:20 mark in that video, Melvin Ingram lunges forward to engage a sled then steps out of the drill looking like he tweaked something. A few seconds later a coach can be heard yelling for a trainer. We didn't see any mention of Ingram getting hurt yesterday so it will be interesting to see if there is an update today or if he participates.
• As we highlighted yesterday, 3 of the players that were limited or not participating were at the C position, Chris Watt, Trevor Robinson, and 3rd round pick Max Tuerk. That left Matt Slausen to work with the 1's, which is where he will probably be week 1.
• Zach Mettenberger threw at least 1 of the 2 interceptions yesterday, which isn't surprising or worrying at this point. As he gets more comfortable with the playbook and receivers, this should be less of an issue. However, what was interesting was his turn at the podium after practice. Zach is looking big, and not in a bad way. He has obviously been hitting the gym. Zach also has apparently been spending some time in a tattoo parlor chair based on all that ink.
• The team played 2 interesting songs yesterday. The Kansas City Chiefs tomahawk chop chant and a remix of the same chant. The Chargers open up week 1 at Kansas City so they'll be hearing plenty of that song on September 11th.