It’s been eight years since the Chargers left San Diego, and veteran Chargers players are feeling the excitement of returning to San Diego for training camp.
A second-round draft pick in 2015, Denzel Perryman spent his rookie years in the NFL playing for the San Diego Chargers until 2017, when the team transferred to Los Angeles.
Perryman was vocal about how he felt this week as the team returns to San Diego for training camp later this week.
"I feel like we should've been went back," said Perryman. "That's where it all started. I'm excited just to go back in general”.
That’s something almost all Chargers fans can resonate with, wanting the team to go back to San Diego.
For fans in San Diego, it’s something they’ve all been waiting almost a decade for. For a player like Perryman, who spent time in San Diego before the relocation to Los Angeles, it’s a special moment to go back to their roots.
Jim Harbaugh helps Chargers rekindle with San Diego via training camp
The Chargers are returning to San Diego for two days on July 22nd & 23rd for training camp at the University of San Diego.
Jim Harbaugh on the Chargers’ returning to San Diego for training camp in 2025: "It's just a great feeling for the whole organization," Harbaugh said on KCAL News. "We want to go where our fans are.”
The Chargers did not return to San Diego until they named Jim Harbaugh as their head coach in January 2024.. His hiring created a transition in the way the organization was getting back to its past roots.
Under Harbaugh’s leadership, the team held a mandatory minicamp at Camp Pendleton in June 2024, their first practice-related activity in the San Diego area since relocating back in 2017, 7 years later.
San Diego has always remained in the Chargers' DNA. Even while the team is at SoFi Stadium, ties to their original city endure within the fanbase, the team’s culture, and more vividly than ever in their uniforms.
The Chargers revealed their two new alternate uniforms, one of the jerseys being a remake of the historic mid-2000s San Diego Chargers navy uniform, bringing them even closer to home.
In the Jim Harbaugh style of Chargers football, the team’s once-San Diego roots seem to live on in the Los Angeles era.