The San Diego Chargers had Joey Bosa at the top of their draft board from January onward, and they did a fantastic job of hiding it.
The Chargers brass, including president John Spanos, GM Tom Telesco, and coach Mike McCoy, were in agreement that the Ohio State defensive lineman would be the favorite to go No. 3 to the Chargers provided he was there, and they knew it from the Fiesta Bowl onward, according to the team’s official site.
“Watching Joey play in the Fiesta Bowl, I left there thinking if he does declare, and if he is there at number three, we’ve got to take him,” Telesco said.
The Chargers did their research on Bosa and loved everything they heard, and by April, the front office had basically settled on Bosa. They even celebrated when Los Angeles and Philadelphia swung trades into the top two with the intention of picking quarterbacks, knowing those deals ensured that Bosa would be there for them at No. 3.
Despite all this, nobody ever caught on to San Diego’s plans.
“To be honest, nobody really asked me about Joey Bosa when it came to this draft class,” Telesco said. “And I wasn’t going to go out of my way to talk about him. But if someone asked about him, I would have talked about him.”
“It was amusing to see,” Spanos added. “We would sit back, read these mock drafts and see who people thought we would take. We would look around at each other and say, ‘Man, I can’t believe no one knows.'”
In fact, Bosa was a frequent mock choice for the Cowboys at No. 5, though it was reported before the draft that they didn’t want him. For all the inside sources and reports that fly around when the draft happens, it’s rather impressive that nobody ever caught on to San Diego’s plans.
