Former Charger Nick Hardwick is a thinker who's thankful he still can assimilate, and so he's capable of some great thoughts as to why NFL players are dropping like so much fall foliage.
Still, we can't know for sure, not even the king's horses and king's men.
Maybe the Chargers haven't brought in faith healers, palming players' foreheads. But it's safe to say they have done just about everything but smear blood around their doors to stave off the injury plague that has crawled through the NFL's streets as if ordered by an angry Moses.
Nothing's worked. It's a shame, really, that Pope Francis didn't have their Murphy Canyon infirmary on his U.S. itinerary.
The Chargers may have set injury records -- really, 12 players coming off the field in Baltimore, eight not returning? -- but they are not alone in sick bay. There's a league-wide epidemic. Pandemic. It's widespread, OK?
Theories abound, but one seems to stand out, in that so much of this bad stuff has gone on since the 2011 signing of the collective bargaining agreement that cut back the amount of time players can work out at their facilities during the offseason.
Cracking open the nutshell, players aren't allowed to spend nearly the amount of time under club supervision that they did before the CBA. So they're either doing work on their own and not doing it right, or not doing enough. There are fewer days of practice and less time in pads, which may be leading to poor tackling and, hence, bad football.
Hardwick, the most decorated Chargers center, retired following the 2014 season after a career that included multiple injuries and concussions. Ironically, he was the team's union player rep when the CBA was ratified.
"There isn't enough training for a brutal game," Hardwick said. "Everyone's going somewhere else to get the proper training -- or they're not getting it at all. And we used to get all we wanted to get ready for combat. Strength coaches have dialed back in fear of losing the team to outside trainers.
"Strength coaches are put in a pickle, whether to work on small muscles or big muscles. The small, connective muscles are not getting developed enough because they don't have time to be. They don't run the hills like they used to. There isn't the intense running. Muscle pulls are just wild right now."
As player rep, Hardwick wasn't exactly enamored with the CBA. People who know labor law will tell you the players got fleeced. But there were mouths to feed.
"I thought we'd either accept the deal or miss games," Hardwick said, "and if you miss games, you never get them back. So it was a double-edged sword. In hindsight, a lot of player reps were vets who didn't need 14 weeks of (offseason) work. But it hasn't helped the younger players. Back then, we worked on our bodies."
When you see what's going on, Hardwick makes so much sense. Because of all this, what happens? The product suffers. There is a reason why starters start. They're better than their subs. Depth has moved into the shallows.
"When the first wave of guys get injured, the second wave isn't prepared," Hardwick says. "So we're seeing sloppier play. So you're not as talented and you get sloppy play and friendly fire. It's hard to get through a football game.
"I know I had to learn how to throttle down after going (all) out after I started just to stay healthy. I developed a heightened awareness for the long term. You can see players saying, 'Maybe I should have taken another week off so maybe I won't get Alzheimer's or dementia.' But then it's at a cost to the team.
"My career ended because of my neck. I couldn't stop getting stingers and there are no studies on stingers, so I couldn't find a long-term prognosis. My hands started shutting down. It got scary. I was diagnosed with six concussions, but I feel great."
And what of Thursday games, which offer so little recovery time?
"It's a real struggle," he said. "Thank goodness for Toradol. It's a strong anti-inflammatory that gets the joints to loosen up. I eventually liked Thursday games when I found I could get through it thanks to that stuff.
"It's a barbaric game. It's brutal. But I loved it."
Injuries be damned. It's about love.
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