INDIANAPOLIS — The Rams, Raiders and Chargers all know where they’ll play next year. But only the Rams can say the same thing after the 2016 season.
Raiders coach Jack Del Rio, a Northern California native, hopes his team remains in Oakland, and knows that's where owner Mark Davis intends to stay.
MORE: Post-merger franchise moves | Inside the NFL's LA vote
“Obviously some things transpired, but the reality is that Mark would prefer to be in Oakland,” Del Rio said Wednesday at the NFL Scouting Combine. “He has maintained that. I know there are other things that have to be looked at from a business standpoint. For me, I’m from there and am excited to be coaching that team. I’m looking forward to this year and am hoping the future will be resolved shortly.”
The Raiders will play at O.co Coliseum, their home for almost 40 years, in 2016.
The Chargers are in a similar situation, facing potentially their final season at Qualcomm Stadium after nearly 50 years. If owner Dean Spanos can’t get a stadium deal in place in San Diego, the team has an agreement to join the Rams in Los Angeles. The team asked San Diego fans to have an "open mind" about efforts for a new downtown stadium as the city and Chargers continue negotiations.
“From a football standpoint, we’re just excited to get back to football,” Chargers general manager Tom Telesco said Thursday. “The stadium situation will take care of itself. It’s just nice to get back to football and give our fans something to be excited about. Our role in football operations is the product on the field.
“In this business, there are always distractions, but we know what we can control. We tell this to our players and our coaches. We control the product on the field. That’s our only focus.”
The Chargers didn’t exactly handle the uncertain future well last year, going 4-12, though Telesco said the stadium situation didn't impact the team’s performance.
“We have to get better and we have to win. The rest will take care of itself,” he said. “You have to be able to take distractions, put them aside and do your job. Obviously we didn’t do that well enough. I don’t know if that had anything to do with it. We just didn’t play well and had a lot of close losses. We just didn’t finish. There are no excuses as far as what’s going on outside. We just have to play better football.”
MORE: Philip Rivers fired up to stay in San Diego | Rams already a hot ticket
The Rams, now out of St. Louis, will have a temporary home at the Los Angeles Coliseum until their new state-of-the-art stadium in Inglewood is completed for the 2019 season. The Rams still face other uncertainties in that they haven’t locked in a training camp site. They will hold their offseason workouts at the Dallas Cowboys' facility in Oxnard.
“We have a meeting scheduled in Los Angeles a week from Friday with all the players, and we’re going to try to give them as much information as we can, from the standpoint of where this is going to take place and where that is going to take place,” Rams coach Jeff Fisher said Wednesday. “If we’re going to put a temporary facility some place up north, you don’t want to put yourself in Newport Beach where you have a two-and-a-half-hour commute every day.”
Fisher has been through a franchise move before, helping the Houston Oilers transition to the Tennessee Titans following the 1996 season. While it’s been reported that Fisher and Rams owner Stan Kroenke discussed a potential move when he was hired in 2012, Fisher denied it on Wednesday.
“No, they were more interested in my goals and things like that,” he told Omnisport.
Relocation has been taxing on Fisher, who stepped down from the NFL's competition committee because of the time commitment needed with the move.
“You’re moving a franchise. You’re leaving one city and going to another, which is difficult from a fan standpoint, from a fan-base standpoint, but you have to take care of the detail things,” Fisher said. “As you go through that step-by-step process, from my standpoint, my job is to keep in mind the player needs.
"Thirty-one other teams in the league right now are staying put, and they’re going through an offseason program and there is stability there. It’s how quickly can we bring stability, from a player perspective, into this offseason program? Because we’re going to kick the season off like everyone else, and we potentially will have made a couple moves during the offseason.”
Business as usual.