AFC Notes: Chargers, Chiefs, Derek Carr, Raiders

Chargers

New Chargers OC Kellen Moore told reporters that he is still in the beginning stages of evaluating the team’s offensive line.

“I’m still in the process of going through that,” Moore said, via ChargersWire.com. “I’m really excited. We haven’t had an offensive staff meeting yet to really dig into this stuff. Certainly, the investment has been huge. Having a guy like [C] Corey [Linsley] as the center — you guys certainly probably feel it, but some people I think don’t recognize the importance of a veteran center and a guy who really runs the show. Corey has been one of the best in the NFL for a number of years. That is really exciting. I think that helps the quarterback. It relieves some of the workload and the volume that a quarterback has to do pre-snap. Having a guy like Corey run the show has been great. Certainly, there has been a lot invested there from a youth standpoint. Tons of younger players have had an opportunity to play. I’m excited to just see those guys continue to develop. They’re young players. Their future is skyrocketing right now. I’m just really excited to work with those guys.”

Chiefs

Chiefs CB Trent McDuffie looked back on his rookie season and noted that he was able to find a routine after suffering a hamstring injury just 32 snaps into his career.

“That was honestly one of the hardest things I had to do just in sports,” McDuffie told reporters, via ChiefsWire.com. “I never had an injury that affected me for such a long period and disabled me pretty much for so long.”

“During that process I think the biggest thing that helped me was just sticking to the consistency of just every day going to meetings, showing up to practice, just acting like I was playing every week,” McDuffie said. “But just the positivity that (I was surrounded by) whether it was family and friends, whether it was coming to this building with coaches and players just consistency lifting me up. They really just allowed me to stay confident throughout the whole thing and come back like I never left.”

“Honestly, I feel like this season was a huge learning curve for me,” McDuffie added. “Especially coming (in), getting hurt and then missing a bunch of games and coming back halfway through the season. For me it was just trying to learn something each and every week, each and every day because as rookies coming in, we don’t really know the game, we don’t know the speed of it. A lot of things are new to us (from) scheduling-wise all the way to football. Trying just to keep an open mind. Trying to just constantly learn, (trying to) learn from the vets (and) learn from other rookies. (It was) something that I took pride in this year, and I think is the reason why it has helped me so much just throughout the year consistently getting better because I just felt like it was my duty to try to match everybody else as quickly as possible when I came back so that’s kind of just how I wired myself throughout the season.”

Raiders

Raiders QB Derek Carr, representing his team for the final time at the 2023 Pro Bowl, got some encouragement from fellow Pro Bowl teammate and Lions QB Jared Goff, who was of course traded by his original team a couple of seasons ago. 

“There’s definitely life on the other side,” Goff said via the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Vincent Bosignore. “Often times a really great life.”

• NFL Media’s Mike Garafolo reports the Raiders have not granted Carr permission to speak to other teams about a possible trade unless those teams agree to their trade conditions first, which means they can’t discuss compensation or coaching fit with Carr.
• Garafolo adds that means there probably is less than a one percent chance that Carr agrees to a trade prior to February 15th when he is due to receive $40 million in guaranteed money.
• Carr told NFL Media’s Cameron Wolfe he has been waking up at 5:30 AM and training hard in order to be in the best shape possible for whichever team he ends up joining.
• Carr is looking to join a team that gives him a good opportunity of winning a Super Bowl: “I’m just looking for teams that have made that decision consistently, that they’ll continually choose to do whatever it takes to put a winning program out there. And so, for me, I just wanna win a championship.” (Stephen Holder)