Latest news with #Harris
USA Today
41 minutes ago
- Sport
- USA Today
5 questions for the Chargers offense entering training camp
The Chargers open training camp on Thursday after veterans reported to the Bolt on Wednesday, starting their preseason program a week early due to their inclusion in the Hall of Fame Game on July 31. Los Angeles hopes their offense will outperform last year's with Jim Harbaugh and Greg Roman at the controls again. But a few major questions about the unit remain. Let's go through them, position by position. QB: Can Justin Herbert stay healthy through the offseason? The face of the Chargers franchise has dealt with some sort of nick in each of the last two offseasons, as he was recovering from labrum surgery in 2023 and then dealing with plantar fasciitis last offseason. While Herbert has barely ever missed time with injury, his durability has been one of the only questions about his status among the league's best quarterbacks. He enters training camp healthy this season and will need to get as many reps as possible with so many new projected starters on offense. RB: When will Najee Harris be back, and will it even matter? One of those projected starters will likely not be on the field to start training camp, as general manager Joe Hortiz told the media Wednesday that running back Najee Harris will likely be placed on the non-football injury list after suffering a minor eye injury in a fireworks incident. Harris was penciled in as the Week 1 starter in the backfield, but his absence will also open the door for first-rounder Omarion Hampton to develop a stranglehold on the starting job and relegate Harris to more of a complementary role. WR: When will Tre Harris sign his rookie deal? 30 of the 32 second-round picks from this year's draft class remain unsigned, with Harris the first to take a stand by holding out largely because of the timing of the Chargers starting camp. Picks 33 (Browns LB Carson Schwesinger) and 34 (Texans WR Jayden Higgins) received fully guaranteed contracts, while Pick 65 (Giants DL Darius Alexander) received only $1.5 million guaranteed on his rookie deal. That's caused a bottleneck on both ends of the second round as they all wait for the league to blink first on the guarantees. But with Mike Williams opening training camp on PUP with a minor injury, having Harris signed and ready to go would've gotten the rookie valuable first-team reps. TE: Can Oronde Gadsden II shake up the depth chart? Los Angeles figures to play Tyler Conklin and Will Dissly the majority of the time at tight end, with jumbo package blocker Tucker Fisk working his way in as well. But Gadsden was the star of OTAs, and neither Conklin or Dissly are so good or expensive that they should block the fifth-rounder from seeing the field more frequently if the rookie continues to ascend. OL: Who's starting on the interior? The million dollar question of the offseason is who - and where - the Chargers are going to start at left guard and center in front of Herbert. OTAs seemed to suggest that it will be Zion Johnson and Bradley Bozeman for the second year in a row, but it still remains to be seen whether the two will switch positions (Johnson at center, Bozeman at guard) or remain the way they lined up last season. Trey Pipkins, who was the better guard last season on the right side but has been pasted over by free agent signing Mekhi Becton, could get back into the competition at left guard, but the Chargers seem more inclined to let him be the swing tackle.
Miami Herald
7 hours ago
- Sport
- Miami Herald
Time to work: Chargers first team to open training camp
The Los Angeles Chargers will be the first NFL team to kick off training camp on Thursday, after rookies and select players reported last Saturday and veterans arrived on Wednesday. The Chargers and the Detroit Lions -- with rookies reporting on Thursday and veterans on duty starting Saturday -- will be the first two teams with their entire squads on site. The Chargers, who hold camp in El Segundo, Calif., and the Lions (Allen Park, Mich.) open the preseason with the NFL/Hall of Fame Game on July 31 in Canton, Ohio. Chargers starting linebacker Daiyan Henley, who had offseason shoulder surgery, said on Wednesday that he expects to be a full participant at training camp. Henley, 25, tore his labrum early in the 2024 campaign and still started all 17 games as well as the lone playoff game. He totaled 147 tackles, one interception, one sack and eight passes defended during the regular season. Running back Najee Harris likely will begin camp on the active/non-football injury list as he is treated for what his agent called a 'superficial eye injury' from a Fourth of July fireworks incident, Chargers general manager Joe Horitz said Wednesday. Harris was expected to report on Wednesday to the team's facility in El Segundo after remaining in the Bay Area following the incident in Antioch, Calif., and treatment at Stanford hospital, Horitz said. Harris' agent, Doug Hendrickson, said following the mishap that the running back is expected to be ready for the 2025 season. The 27-year-old signed a one-year deal, $5.25 million deal with the Chargers in the offseason that could be worth up to an additional $4 million if he meets all incentives for rushing yardage. Harris and first-round draft pick Omarion Hampton (North Carolina) are expected to be the team's main ball carriers. Harris topped 1,000 rushing yards in all four of his seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers and has 4,312 yards and 28 rushing touchdowns in 68 NFL games (all starts). The Steelers selected him 24th overall in the 2021 NFL Draft, and Harris made the Pro Bowl and the NFL All-Rookie team that season. He became a free agent after the 2024 season. The 2025 regular season starts on Thursday, Sept. 4 with the Dallas Cowboys against the Philadelphia Eagles. The Cowboys will have their full squad on site on Monday, while the defending Super Bowl champions will do the same on Tuesday. The Kansas City Chiefs, who face the Chargers in the league's second regular-season game in Brazil on Sept. 5, will have their full squad on site on Monday. There will be 30 clubs fully reported by Tuesday, while the Atlanta Falcons and Steelers are having players report on July 23. This year's training camps will feature 29 clubs scheduling joint practices with other teams, and 26 clubs (81.3 percent) will hold the majority of camp at their practice facility, home stadium or at a site within 10 miles of team headquarters. By comparison, 10 of the 31 teams in 2000 chose to stay home. Six clubs are holding camps away from their facilities: Buffalo Bills (Rochester, N.Y.), Cowboys (Oxnard, Calif.), Indianapolis Colts (Westfield, Ind.), Chiefs (St. Joseph, Mo.), Rams (Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles) and Steelers (Latrobe, Pa.). Field Level Media 2025 - All Rights Reserved
USA Today
10 hours ago
- Sport
- USA Today
Chargers RB Najee Harris likely to begin training camp on the non-football injury list
Chargers running back Najee Harris will likely begin training camp on the active/non-football injury list, general manager Joe Hortiz told reporters on Wednesday. Harris is expected to report to The Bolt later today, per Hortiz. He has been receiving treatment from doctors at Stanford. Hortiz added that the Chargers haven't seen the extent of his injury yet. Harris suffered a superficial eye injury due to a fireworks mishap during a Fourth of July party. The NFI designation means Harris can return at any point during camp.
Daily Mail
11 hours ago
- Health
- Daily Mail
JOHN MACLEOD: Farewell to Colin the dentist - he scaled and polished with the touch of an Old Master at work...
The other day, after the latest importunate and texted reminder, I dropped by my Stornoway dental surgery to book the annual appointment for smile-maintenance. 'And I'd like it to be with Colin Robertson,' I declared. The receptionists stared, their mouths perfect little os of horror. 'But Colin's retired…' 'Yes – he retired last year.' 'Retired?' I gargled, in an inadvertent impersonation of Lady Bracknell. 'Yes. He's retired.' To grasp the enormity of this, you need to know that Colin Robertson had near-uninterrupted charge of my gnashers, in four different surgeries in two different communities, for over thirty years. Pert and funny, a son of East Kilbride, I have grown grey under the Robertson probings. He is oddly ageless. I glimpse him in the Co-op from time to time and, still pink and dark, he still looks good for the Fifth Year disco. It would be stretching it to say I know Colin well. Given the nature of dental appointments, conversations tend to be a trifle one-sided. And with that oddly distorted vision when your head is horizontal and said BDS has at your molars with some implement or other that always seems the size of a bicycle pump. But, now that his hands are forever out of the saliva, I can attest that he was an extraordinarily good dentist, from our many encounters over the decades in Harris and Stornoway. From the get-go, he was grand with the compliments – 'John, your teeth are good, and you look after them.' Colin probed and drilled and scaled and polished with the touch of an Old Master at a great painting. By contrast, when I was briefly abandoned to another dental surgeon, that chap had at my tender gums like some Dad of a Saturday regrouting the bathroom. Colin taught me to brush my teeth properly. On his counsel, I in time invested in an electric toothbrush – he recommended the brand, too – and was much loved in Harris, where he had the run of the school as well as the island, for his jolly spitside manner. 'Now, Duncan,' he once purred to a youthful friend of mine, 'I'm going to tug this out on the count of three…' And yanked, in a painless instant, at two. 'Quite a few appointments cancelled the day,' Colin once intoned, as I stared back – supine – and oozed such witticisms as 'Gah.' Colin winked. 'Probably because Marathon Man was on Grampian last night…' For those unfamiliar with Seventies cinema, Marathon Man stars Laurence Olivier, no less, as Dr Szell, an ageing, vicious Nazi dentist who has longly at a pinioned Dustin Hoffman's unanaesthetised teeth with his drill 'until you tell me it is safe…' 'Wah-gah,' I bubbled sagely. 'Is it safe?' thereafter became our running gag for some years. I particularly warmed to Colin because, like most of my generation, childhood memories of dental treatment are less than optimal. In 2003, exploring the haunts of my Lochaber infancy, I was ambling down Fort William's High Street when I glanced sideways and beheld an open door with a flight of stairs ascending immediately. Triggered? I actually sprang backwards, in instant and irrational terror, and drew breath, and took stock, and saw the brass plate intoning this to be a dental surgery. In 1969 – it must have been that early, for I was still in tights – I was borne here, held down by pitiless arms, gassed unconscious, and came to in the family Morris Minor howling my head off and spitting blood all over those tights. Which were light brown, I remember. 'They wouldn't even let us hang about afterwards for a few minutes so I could calm you down,' my father would recall darkly. Our dentist in Glasgow, a chilly man who did not like children, was little better. He didn't believe in a time-consuming, numbing injection for trivial things like a new filling and, when I once anxiously inquired what he was actually packing into the latest bored cavity, said coldly, 'A piece of potato.' I am ashamed to say how long, and for years thereafter, I believed him. But, thanks to good genetics and lifelong application of fluoride toothpaste – to say nothing of growing up in an era when most Scottish parents confined treats like crisps, sweets and fizz firmly to Fridays – I reached my late thirties with all my own teeth. And just two fillings that required periodic renewal, till Colin neatly permanented one with a rather splendid job in gold. Just once, after calm adult discussion, he replaced the other without anaesthesia, explaining that if I chose this as a hill to die on it would have to be a palatal injection, protracted and unpleasant. I trusted him, and just as we neared Dustin Hoffman territory the drilling ceased and was complete. Colin's counsel on toothpaste was simple. Buy one you like the taste of; then you will brush more often. He had no time for Corsodyl toothpaste and told me bluntly nine years back to stop using it. From 2015 he encouraged me to use little interdental brushes, as I never took to flossing, and to vast improvement for my gum health; I buy those packets of pink DenTek ones at Boots. And in 2004 we dolefully agreed that two of my ivory castles had to go. They were rear, impacted wisdom teeth, almost impossible to clean and which were beginning to cause problems. It was a bit dramatic – I swear Colin had to brace himself with a foot against the chair, as I stared at the ceiling and thought of the Empire – but out they were duly whipped, and any discomfort had ceased by the morrow. I am probably an ideal dental patient because, as the son of a Free Church manse, I was schooled from an early age to sit calmly and still. It wasn't just that we had to attend two Sabbath services a week – and my father rarely brought a sermon back to the runway within forty-five minutes – but we sat in a conspicuous manse-pew, side-on to the assembled faithful and the cynosure of all eyes. Even now, I still bump into folk who affectionately recall the 'three little heads' in Partick Highland. And I can still give the impression of listening with rapt attention when, really, I amn't. We are all much more dentally conscious these days. When you recall public figures of the Seventies – Denis Healey springs immediately to mind – it is surprising how many had awful teeth. Alert to detail and conscious of image, as always, Margaret Thatcher used to have a distinctive gap in her upper fangs. But, by the 1983 election, it had been discreetly disappeared. Though I have always drawn the line at professional whitening, having no desire to go around leering like Liberace. I hope Colin Robertson enjoys his retirement – this is actually his third attempt – and, no doubt, it will involve a lot of golf. Meanwhile, I am booked in for the services of his faceless successor on 21 August. But if he looks remotely like Dr Szell, I shall turn on my heels and flee.
Chicago Tribune
12 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Former sheriff's employee pleads guilty in theft, making repayment
A former Cook County sheriff's office employee has made partial restitution after pleading guilty to theft of COVID-19 pandemic stimulus money, according to Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul's office. Raymond Harris, 45, of Calumet Park, pleaded guilty Monday to one count of theft exceeding $10,000, a felony, a news release from Raoul's office. Harris fraudulently applied for and received about $20,000 in a Paycheck Protection Program loan, according to the release. Harris was employed by the Cook County sheriff's office in 2021 when he fraudulently applied for and a received the PPP loan from the U.S. Small Business Administration by falsely claiming that he owned a sole proprietorship business that did not exist, according to the sheriff's office. Harris paid $2,500 in restitution upfront, with Cook County Judge Michael Pattarozzi ordering Harris to pay the remainder in $382 monthly installments and to complete two years of second chance probation, according to the news release.
