One of the main storylines of the Chargers’ 2022 season was the dreaded injury bug.
Star players like Joey Bosa, Keenan Allen, J.C. Jackson and Mike Williams missed significant portions of the season. The aforementioned Jackson, Rashawn Slater, Christian Covington, Otito Ogbonnia, and Jalen Guyton were amongst a group of players that specifically suffered season-ending injuries.
Back in February, the team parted ways with head athletic trainer Damon Mitchell. Mitchell had been with the organization for 24 years and was in the head athletic trainer role for six seasons.
As the team’s mandatory minicamp kicked off on Tuesday, the Chargers made two new hires to their training staff official.
Marco Zucconi is being promoted to Director of Player Health and Performance. Zucconi was previously an associate athletic trainer for #Chargers. Team is also hiring Sal Lopez from Titans as head athletic trainer.
— Daniel Popper (@danielrpopper) June 13, 2023
Marco Zucconi’s promotion to Director of Player Health and Performance doesn’t exactly come as a surprise. Zucconi was the AFC recipient of the Tim Davey Award for Assistant Athletic Trainer of the Year during the 2022 season. Sal Lopez will replace Mitchell as head athletic trainer. He served as the Titans’ assistant athletic trainer for the last five seasons.
It will be interesting to see how the Chargers dish and divide responsibilities out with their new training staff. Mitchell’s responsibilities seemed very broad with every aspect of the medical department, including the supervision of every individual player’s health.
With Brandon Staley and Tom Telesco making their first joint head trainer hire, one wonders if the power structure in the training and health division might operate differently than before.
It’s a make-or-break year for the Chargers after they invested heavy financial capital into one more run for the current core before some changes are made. Simply put, they can’t afford to have their stars on the sidelines or IR.
Looking at 2022 Adjusted Games Lost, the Chargers ranked 18th in the league. Technically, they’ve had worse seasons in terms of the total amount of missed games. However, Los Angeles’ problem was about how concentrated injuries were amongst their top players. The Chargers averaged 27th place in the league throughout the 2022 season in Dr. Matt Provencher’s BUS rankings. Prior to getting slightly healthier near the end of the season, they found themselves in the bottom five teams in the banged-up score rankings most weeks.
As Los Angeles prepares to bring back most of 2022’s players that suffered severe or nagging injuries, these two staff shakeups will go a long way in deciding whether the Chargers will have better health outcomes this year.