SAN DIEGO -- Chargers general manager Tom Telesco addressed his team finishing the regular season tied for the second-oldest roster in the NFL during his season-ending news conference.
The average age of San Diego’s roster at the end of 2014 was 27.3, with 14 players over the age of 30. To be fair, late-season additions like punter Mat McBriar (35 years old) and running back Ronnie Brown (33 years old) helped to skew those numbers.
However, six of the team’s projected top-10 base salaries for the 2015 season currently on the roster are for players 30 years old or over, including quarterback Philip Rivers (33, $15.25 million in base salary), Eric Weddle (30, $7.5 million), Antonio Gates (34, $5.9 million), Jarret Johnson (33, $5 million), Mike Scifres (34, $3.56 million) and Malcom Floyd (33, $3.55 million).
Telesco does have some flexibility, with the ability to restructure or release veteran players with those salaries to create more cap space. However, he also has to balance keeping the foundation of this roster in place and content, along with adding young talent that can help the Chargers compete at a championship level.
Telesco said that when the Chargers made final cuts in August, the average age of the roster was 26.2 or 26.3. And he noted the top 10 average age for NFL teams is around 25.75, so there's not much of a difference..
“I don’t get worried about the average age of your roster,” Telesco said. “I don’t think that works. We probably had seven or eight prominent players on our roster that are over 30. But for me, No. 1, those are the guys that have really built this foundation for us. And we couldn’t have done it without those guys. So that’s key.
“And secondly, a lot of our backups are younger players that are developing. We don’t have a lot of older backup players. So there’s an old adage -- never let a position group grow old together. I think we’re OK there. We do like to monitor it, but we didn’t have a huge issue with the age of our roster this year. It will naturally get younger because we’ve got some guys getting toward the end of their contracts this year.”
