EL SEGUNDO \u2014 Wide receiver Tre\u2019 Harris broke from the line of scrimmage at the snap of the ball. He sprinted several yards from his spot on the right side of the Chargers\u2019 formation, cut toward the middle of the field, turned his head quickly enough to pick up the flight of the ball and snare Justin Herbert\u2019s pass.<\/p>\n
To an untrained observer, it looked like a flawlessly executed play during an 11-on-11 drill Sunday. Harris\u2019 route was precise and Herbert\u2019s throw was on target. There seemed to be an easy connection between Harris, a second-year player, and Herbert, a seven-year veteran.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, I feel a lot more comfortable,\u201d Harris said of his second training camp.<\/p>\n
Rookie training camps can be disorienting for even the most polished, well-trained and high-performing draft picks. So, it\u2019s no wonder Harris has felt more relaxed, more at home in his second one. He has a new offensive coordinator in Mike McDaniel<\/a>, but even that\u2019s been a smooth transition.<\/p>\n So far in training camp, Harris has found his comfort zone, and it\u2019s not just while catching a well-thrown pass after running into the soft underbelly of the defense during a no-tackling scrimmage against his fellow Chargers. There have been some big differences between Season 1 and Season 2.<\/p>\n \u201cI gained a few pounds of muscle,\u201d Harris said of adding an extra seven to eight pounds. \u201cThat was kind of something me and my receivers coach (Sanjay Lal) talked about. I told him this offseason that I wanted to put on a little extra weight to be able to be more explosive and also stay fast and be stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n Harris, 24, caught 30 passes for 324 yards and one touchdown in 17 games, including 10 starts, in his rookie season<\/a>, after the Chargers drafted him in the second round from the University of Mississippi<\/a>. It was a fine start to his career, but Harris said he wasn\u2019t entirely pleased by the results.<\/p>\n \u201cLast year, I wasn\u2019t happy with how I performed the last half of the season, to be honest,\u201d Harris said. \u201cI felt like I was digressing, to be honest with you. So, I felt like going into this season, I had to stay on top of my food, my nutrition, stay on top of the weight room. Going through the offseason, I wanted to establish what I wanted to establish, and now I have a really good plan going into the season.\u201d<\/p>\n So, Harris said he went into camp weighing 215 pounds.<\/p>\n The next adjustment was to learn all that McDaniel can teach about a higher-tempo offense than the Chargers played during Greg Roman\u2019s two-season tenure as their offensive coordinator. Conviction over perfection has been one of McDaniel\u2019s constant themes since his hiring in January.<\/p>\n Sounds clever, but what does it mean?<\/p>\n \u201cLast year, I was super busy trying to be perfect in all my plays,\u201d Harris said. \u201cHe, literally, came in and it was just, like, \u2018You know what? Yeah, being perfect is cool and all, but if you have conviction going into a play, each and every play, full speed and you\u2019ve got the defense on their heels the entire game, it doesn\u2019t really matter how perfect you are. You\u2019re going to make plays out of it.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cAnd that\u2019s something I\u2019m trying to live by.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s also another not-so-subtle tweak that McDaniel has made to the offense. It means Harris and the other Chargers receivers must be prepared to turn and look for Herbert\u2019s passes faster than they did in the past. Herbert has been tasked with delivering his throws in 2.4 seconds or less.<\/p>\n \u201cJust speeding up every single route, just being fast on the ball, that\u2019s one thing we\u2019ve emphasized this year, especially with the timing that we have in this offense with all the quick passes we\u2019re going to have,\u201d Harris said. \u201cJustin, he\u2019s just as accurate as ever, so you\u2019ve got to get your head around and your hands up.\u201d<\/p>\n Or else Harris and his fellow receivers risk getting conked in the helmet by one of Herbert\u2019s accurate spirals.<\/p>\n EXTRA POINTS<\/p>\n Left tackle Rashawn Slater<\/a> was absent from practice for the second consecutive day because of unspecified reasons. \u2026 Safety Derwin James Jr., cornerback Tarheeb Still and outside linebacker Bud Dupree also did not practice. \u2026 With Slater sidelined, Trey Pipkins III played left tackle with Branson Taylor at left guard in the unit blocking for Herbert for a second day in a row<\/a>. \u2026 Cameron Dicker kicked field goals of 39, 53, 37 and 45 yards during a full-speed drill near the end of practice, but he also pulled a 42-yard try wide left.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL SEGUNDO \u2014 Wide receiver Tre\u2019 Harris broke from the line of scrimmage at the snap of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1333,752,74,76,75,127],"class_list":["post-428380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-los-angeles-chargers","tag-nfl","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}