The Chargers entered the offseason with a major need at upgrading the center position. Even before Bradley Bozeman\u2019s retirement announcement, the Bolts were going to enter the 2026 with a new center. That was a certainty.<\/p>\n
Sitting atop this year\u2019s free agent class is one of the game best young centers in Tyler Linderbaum. His fifth-year option was not picked up by the Ravens in hopes that they could get a new deal done with a better price tag. Until Tuesday, there had been no apparent movement in that regard. However, Baltimore general manager Eric DeCosta spoke with the media on Tuesday at the NFL Combine and let it be known that the Ravens have in fact offered Linderbaum as \u201crecord-setting offer.\u201d That means it tops Creed Humphrey\u2019s four-year, $72 million deal that he signed with the Chiefs.<\/p>\n
So now the Chargers are unfortunately forced to play the waiting game. If Linderbaum takes the deal before free agency arrives, then that\u2019ll be that and the Chargers will move on to other potential targets at center such as Connor McGovern or Cade Mays. McGovern, stat-wise, isn\u2019t far off from the play of Linderbaum and Mays has been very steady for a mid-round draft pick that\u2019s been starting for a Carolina team that\u2019s been bad prior to 2025.<\/p>\n
In my opinion, either option would be easily palatable after the center play of the Chargers over the past two seasons. Crossing off the need prior to the NFL Draft is also important to allow other big needs to be address within the first two days, as well.<\/p>\n
With this now being reported, question of the day now is, \u201cHow okay will you be if the Chargers do not end up signing Tyler Linderbaum this offseason?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chargers entered the offseason with a major need at upgrading the center position. Even before Bradley Bozeman\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":724295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2064],"tags":[241,7,1014,262,2453,2444,2443,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-773804","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-chargers","8":"tag-chargers","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-los-angeles","11":"tag-los-angeles-chargers","12":"tag-los-angeles-chargers-news","13":"tag-losangeles","14":"tag-losangeleschargers","15":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116127027012452963","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=773804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/724295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=773804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=773804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=773804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}