Tag: Keenan Allen Chargers

Report: Chargers rejected Keenan Allen’s extension counteroffer before trade

A timeline of the events surrounding Keenan Allen’s talks with the Chargers organization before the trade can be established.

According to ESPN’s Kris Rhim, a timeline of the events surrounding Keenan Allen’s talks with the Chargers organization before the trade can be established.

After the NFL Combine, the Chargers asked Allen to take a pay cut similar to what they asked of Joey Bosa and Khalil Mack. However, in a new wrinkle, LA offered Allen a two-year extension along with the restructured 2024 contract.

This isn’t necessarily surprising. At his press conference last week, Joe Hortiz mentioned that an extension was one of the options that was discussed with Allen prior to the trade. The specifics of it were unknown at the time though.

Per Rhim, the extension offer AAV was less than Allen’s current base salary of $18.1 million. While not a drastically low offer for receivers aging into their 30s, Allen is coming off one of the most productive seasons of his career. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers also re-signed star wide receiver Mike Evans to a deal worth $20.5 million per season prior to the opening of free agency. It wouldn’t be surprising if Allen’s camp used that contract as a baseline for a new deal.

Allen’s camp responded with an extension counteroffer that they thought was more indicative of the receiver’s value. This was two days after the deal was offered to the new Bears’ wideout at the NFL Combine. Using Rhim’s exact words, the counteroffer extension from Allen and his team was “summarily rejected.”

We know the rest of what happened following the rejected counteroffer. Allen was traded to the Bears roughly two weeks ago prior to his roster bonus kicking in on the following Sunday.

Jim Harbaugh was a straight shooter in his media availability on Monday, saying that the NFL was a business. He also mentioned Allen doing what was “honorable” for his family. Hortiz indicated that a roster built around a pricey Allen and potential extensions for other members of the former Big Four restructures group would’ve limited how the new front office wanted to build the team.

The Chargers will look towards both the draft and free agency to fill the void left by Allen.

Keenan Allen believes he will be with Chargers in 2024: ‘I don’t see myself going anywhere’

Keenan Allen believes that he will be staying in Los Angeles.

With the Chargers set to be over the league’s salary cap, they will have to do some wheeling and dealing with some of their players this offseason to clear up space, whether it’s extending, trading, restructuring or releasing them.

Among the current highest-paid players who could be dealt to open up salary cap space is wide receiver Keenan Allen, who has a cap hit of $34.7 million.

Allen, however, believes that he will remain in Los Angeles.

“Yeah. Absolutely,” Allen told NFL Media’s Cam Wolfe at the Pro Bowl Games when asked if he expected to be with the Chargers next season.

“I don’t see myself going anywhere,” he added.

Allen is coming off the best season of his career before suffering a heel injury that kept him sidelined for the final four games of the season.

In 13 games, he set the Chargers’ single-season record for receptions with 108 and amassed 1,243 yards, the second-most in his career. Allen also had seven touchdowns.

Jim Harbaugh was introduced as the Chargers’ new head coach on Thursday, and he mentioned Allen when asked about the players that attracted him.

“He’s been watching for a long time, and we actually played against each other: Stanford-Cal,” Allen said about Harbaugh. “He just wants me to continue to be a leader. Continue to be who I am. And he’s going to do his job.”

Coming off a 5-12 season, Allen knows better days are ahead for the Bolts.

“We’re going to continue to compete,” Allen said. “Do what we do and put some better results out there.”

Keenan Allen on future with Chargers: ‘I don’t want to go nowhere else’

Keenan Allen could be dealt to clear up salary cap space.

With the Chargers set to be over the league’s salary cap, they will have to do some wheeling and dealing with some of their players this offseason to create space, whether it’s extending, trading, restructuring or releasing them.

Among the current highest-paid players who could be dealt to open up salary cap space is wide receiver Keenan Allen. Allen, however, hopes that he remains in Los Angeles.

“I don’t want to go nowhere else,” Allen said. “I’ve been here 10 years, like you said, the longest guy on the team, so I’m not looking forward to anything else.”

Allen is coming off the best season of his career before suffering a heel injury that kept him sidelined for the final four games of the season. In 13 games, he set the Chargers’ single-season record for receptions with 108 and amassed 1,243 yards, the second-most in his career.

Allen is due $18.1 million in the final year of his contract. Meanwhile, the Bolts are expected to be over $45 million over the projected $240.5 million salary cap in 2024.

If he happened to be traded, Allen said he would only play for a “select few” teams. Otherwise, he would retire.

“If it did come down to that, adios amigos,” Allen said. “I’ll get picked up in the offseason or right before the playoffs like them old heads be doing.”

Chargers WR Keenan Allen on importance of OTAs: ‘I use it as a lift’

Keenan Allen talked about his mentality at Chargers OTAs.

Wide receiver Keenan Allen is a seasoned veteran at this point of his NFL career but still chooses to participate in the Chargers’ organized team activities to stay sharp ahead of each new season.

One of the team’s unquestioned leaders, Allen talked about the importance of the offseason workouts, emphasizing the benefits he sees from taking part in the annual tradition.

It helps me get into shape I use it as a lift. I get the lift in, get the meetings. Obviously, we have the new coordinator, so I want to know all of the terminology so that I can play fast myself, so that I can help the young guys — when we break the huddle, get them lined up when they need help. Make sure that everybody is on the same page. We need old guys out here, too.

In 2022, Allen missed seven games due to a hamstring issue, finishing with 66 catches for 752 yards and four touchdowns.

The 10-year wideout has been vital to the Bolts’ offense throughout his professional career. During that span, Allen has caught 796 passes for 9,287 yards and 52 touchdowns.

While he is getting up in age, set to be 31 this season and coming off an injury-riddled campaign, Allen is productive when healthy. He is still one of the best route runners in the league. He is a safety blanket on third down.

Chargers WR Keenan Allen making big impact since his return

Chargers WR Keenan Allen’s performances continue to get stronger by the week.

Since the Chargers have been riddled with injuries from the start of the season, several key players have been missed, including wide receiver Keenan Allen who is an essential piece of the offense.

Allen was absent for most of the first half of the season due to a hamstring injury. But since his return, he’s made his presence felt, and his performances continue to get stronger by the week.

On Monday night, Chargers fans saw a classic performance from Allen, where he had 11 catches for 104 yards against the Colts. This was his first 100-yard performance of the season.

“I liked how we were able to locate Keenan today with 11 receptions,” Staley said at his post-game press conference on Monday.

Through the last four games, he’s racked up 37 catches for 370 yards and a touchdown. He’s averaging 12.8 targets, 9.3 receptions and 92.5 receiving yards since Week 13.

Although Allen missed a portion of the season, it seems as though the veteran is getting hot at the right time. He will be an integral piece in an offense that needs to get rolling in these final two games ahead of the playoffs.

WR Keenan Allen’s bounce-back performance helps lift Chargers over Eagles

Keenan Allen was unstoppable in the Chargers’ victory over the Eagles.

Wide receiver Keenan Allen played a vital role in helping the Chargers snap their two-game losing streak.

As the Eagles sat in their zone coverage for nearly the entire contest, Allen went to town, finding the soft spots of the defense early and often.

On 13 targets, Allen finished with 12 catches for 104 yards in the team’s 27-24 win over the Eagles. He led all of Bolts pass-catchers with five first downs and two contested catches, according to Pro Football Focus.

Allen earned the 30th 100-yard receiving game of his career. His sensational performance left the veteran receiver just three yards shy of collecting 8,000 receiving yards throughout his NFL career.

“He came up big for us in so many different situations,” head coach Brandon Staley said. “His play today got Justin Herbert in a really good rhythm because Justin knows that he’s the guy that he can go to get himself on schedule. I felt like we had good design, and then Keenan just does what he always does. He was clutch for us today.”

Allen’s outing came after dealing with a multitude of dropped passes in the weeks prior. But he reminded everyone that he still is indeed one of the best wide receivers in this league.

“I thought he was incredible,” Herbert said. “You know, he’s one of those guys you go to on third down and all season long, he’s been super dependable. He’s had such a great work ethic the past couple of weeks and it shows out there on the field.”

Chargers’ Keenan Allen named NFL’s second-best slot receiver

Keenan Allen is one of the league’s most under-appreciated players.

Despite proving himself on the field and having the stats to back it up, Chargers wide receiver Keenan Allen still doesn’t get the recognition that he deserves to this day.

In the eyes of Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar, however, Allen is regarded as the second-best slot receiver in this league, only behind Chiefs’ Tyreek Hill.

Below, Farrar justifies Allen’s ranking with a brief explanation and numbers from this past season.

Allen has been one of the NFL’s more underrated receivers since the Chargers selected him in the third round of the 2013 draft out of Cal. Allen doesn’t blow you away with explosive plays — he doesn’t really have the straight-line speed for that — but when it comes to understanding and exploiting coverages from anywhere on the field, there are few better.

In 2020, Allen caught 43 of 60 slot targets for 441 yards and six touchdowns. Those numbers put him behind other slot receivers on this list, but the tape really doesn’t. When a defensive back doesn’t have the advantage of the boundary to deal with Allen’s route trickiness, the task becomes exponentially more difficult.

Early on in his professional career, Allen was dinged by injuries. However, he has managed to stay healthy over the course of the past four seasons, averaging 100 receptions and over 1,000 receiving yards in that timespan en route to four Pro Bowl appearances.

This upcoming season, despite the change in offensive system, Allen, who’s established himself as one of the league’s most efficient route-runners, should do what he does best by getting open consistently to leave a wide-open target for quarterback Justin Herbert.

I’m predicting Allen to finish the year with 157 targets, 106 receptions, 1,273 yards and eight touchdowns.

Chargers’ Keenan Allen mentioned among NFL’s best wide receivers

Chargers wide receiver Keenan Allen is finally getting the respect that he deserves.

For years now, Chargers wide receiver Keenan Allen has been left out when discussing the best players at his position, despite putting up numbers that rank near the top.

However, a handful NFL executives, coaches, scouts and players beg to differ.

50 of them were polled, which was used to compile the best wideouts in the league, and Allen was tabbed as the eighth-best.

Allen has established himself as a seasoned route-runner with physical balls, which has aided in him amassing 1,100-plus yards receiving the past three consecutive seasons.

“We use examples of him in the film room running a bunch of routes,” one NFL head coach said.

Allen has been knocked because a lot of his work has been exclusively in the slot, but he has shown that he’s more than capable of still putting defensive backs on skates on the outside.

“It doesn’t get any better than him in the slot,” one NFL coordinator said. “He understands every release. He has a plan. Timing is flawless.”

Per Pro Football Focus, Allen has posted the fourth-best receiving grade in the NFL (91.2) since 2017.

Allen is entering the final year of his contract. He will have the opportunity to put together a big season even with Tyrod Taylor or Justin Herbert under center, as he is set to have favorable matchups throughout the 2020 season.

James Jones gives high praise to Chargers WR Keenan Allen

Chargers wide receiver Keenan Allen cracked the top-5.

Chargers wide receiver Keenan Allen has been the model of dominance for years now, putting up numbers that stack up among the league’s best wideouts.

However, he still doesn’t get the credit that he deserves.

Credit was given by former Packers WR and current NFL Network analyst James Jones recently, as he tabbed Allen as the No. 4 wide receiver heading into the 2020 season.

“Keenan Allen off the line of scrimmage and his route-running is absolutely special,” Jones said. Every time you see Allen catch a ball, you really don’t see a defensive back too close to him because he is special at getting separation and special at making tough catches.

James notes the fact that Allen isn’t given the recognition that he deserves because he plays for a team that “doesn’t win a lot of games.”

Since 2013, Allen has had more than 1,100 receiving yards each of the past three seasons and has been named to the Pro Bowl in all three of those seasons.

Perhaps the league’s most prolific route-runner, Allen has the opportunity to have another great campaign even with the change at quarterback and offense switching to a run-heavy approach.

The former Cal product is slated to be a free agent after this season.