Anthony Lynn isn’t focused on anything that’s not on the field

The biggest similarity between Anthony Lynn’s presser from this past Friday and the one this morning was certainly the mystery swirling around defensive end Melvin Ingram and why he hasn’t been practicing with the team. Like Friday, Ingram was once again standing on the sideline in sweats as the rest of his team went through their first day of full pads.

In Lynn’s pre-practice presser, he reasserted that it’s company business revolving Ingram’s situation and was extra assertive about not wanting to speak on it any further while there’s plenty of other things to worry about.

So what does this all mean? We’ll get to that in more on my latest round of notes and thoughts from Lynn’s last two press conferences.

Notes/Thoughts

• Just to reiterate, Lynn was very against the idea of speaking about the Ingram business much deeper than a simple “he’s fine, it’ll be fine” sentiment. One doesn’t have to be an expert to see that there’s a bit of buried frustration behind his words, which tells me that the likely theme at hand here is contract negotiations. Ingram is heading into his final year of his latest four-year contract.

He’s set to make $14 million in base salary with another couple million spread around other areas of the deal. It’s currently the highest cap hit in 2020 for the Chargers, even above Joey Bosa’s new extension. If he’s looking for a new deal in L.A., I think he’s going to have better luck looking elsewhere. At 31-years old, he hasn’t performed up to his expectations the last two seasons and this team has plenty players with higher priority on the 2021 free agent “to-do” list before they should consider bringing him back. Third-year OLB Uchenna Nwosu is waiting in the wings and this may be the opportunity he’s been looking for to get significant playing time in 2020.

• Anthony Lynn was asked abut any specific players he’s excited about seeing on the field today with it being the first day of pads. He didn’t have anyone special in mind and simply stated how excited he was to see everyone. However, you could tell he was itching to get out on the field with that thought in mind. Lynn hasn’t seen the players go live since January, so it’s been a long seven months of waiting to get to this point.
• At one point, The O.C. Register’s Gilbert Manzano asked why Justin Herbert was seen working on a separate field with the third-team while Tyrod Taylor and Easton Stick were on the same field. Lynn said that’s just how the day went and there’s not much more to the story. He mentioned that on other days that Stick could be the one on the other field while Taylor and Herbert are together on the main field. “Depends what I see in practice.”

• On Friday’s call, Daniel Popper of The Athletic asked Lynn about a heavy brace on the knee of left tackle Trey Pipkins. Lynn said that Pipkins had a little bit of a “setback” but that he’ll be just fine, essentially telling us that there isn’t anything to worry about regarding that. If there’s anything to take away, it’s that Sam Tevi may have the left tackle job locked up a bit more than we all expected from the jump.

• Manzano asked Lynn about his comment’s from last week’s episode of Hard Knocks regarding Herbert’s ability to “gain ground.” To that, Lynn just said that he’s able to almost get back to the line of scrimmage after just a hitch or two when he’s climbing the pocket. He noted that this could be a good thing when facing pressure as he’ll be able to escape at a faster rate than shorter quarterbacks.

Tomorrow pre-practice presser will be with defensive coordinator Gus Bradley and I believe it will be the first time he’s met with the media since the NFL Combine back in late February.