Charger Notebook : Chandler and Ortmayer Both Give Unfavorable Review to ‘Banned’

Charger wide receiver Wes Chandler was mad Friday when his probably-soon-to-be-ex-teammates took the field for the first day of the team’s veteran weekend minicamp.

Steve Ortmayer, the team’s director of football operations, was madder.

The target of their considerable wrath was a headline writer for another local paper. Both objected to the “Chandler banned from camp” headline that ran across the top of the paper’s front sports page Friday.

“I’m bewildered that I read something of this nature,” Chandler said. “This dampens my spirits.”

“If I find the guy that wrote that headline, it’s gonna be him and me,” Ortmayer said. “And I will find the guy that wrote that headline.”

Both Ortmayer and Chandler said they agreed Thursday that Chandler would not participate in the minicamp because the team is trying to trade Chandler. Both insisted Chandler was not banned .

“We didn’t want the camp to become a media melee because of me,” Chandler said.

The story quoted Chandler as saying he and Ortmayer agreed on the decision to withhold Chandler from workouts.

As of Friday, the Chargers were still trying to work out a trade for Chandler, 31. Chandler mentioned San Francisco, Tampa Bay and New Orleans as possibilities.

“I believe Wes is a fine football player and can help any team,” Charger Coach Al Saunders said. But Saunders said Chandler could still return to the Chargers if a trade doesn’t occur.

Starting linebacker Chip Banks didn’t participate in the workouts on the advice of his agent. Banks is a free agent. Ortmayer was unconcerned.

“We’re close on a contract,” Ortmayer said. “It’s Chip’s modus operandi to not participate in drills if he isn’t signed.”

Ortmayer said he didn’t expect to reach an agreement before the end of the minicamp. “It’s not like we’re going round the clock with negotiations on this thing,” he said.

Defensive end Joe Phillips, also a free agent, has not reported at all. Banks, at least, is in town and attending team meetings.

An encouraging presence on the field for the Chargers was that of defensive end Leslie O’Neal. He is still recovering from a knee injury suffered during the 1986 season, his rookie year. Even though O’Neal failed his team physical Thursday, he is participating in agility drills.

But that doesn’t mean that the coaching staff is holding its breath in hopes that O’Neal will be ready for the 1988 season.

“We’re hoping, but we’re not counting on anything,” said Ron Lynn, the defensive coordinator. “He’s long past due recovering with reference to the timetable we were originally told by the doctors. If we get anything out of Leslie this year, it will be a bonus. But just the fact that he’s around is good to see.”

The arm strength of former Bear quarterback Steve Fuller was impossible to ignore. Fuller, signed recently by the Chargers as a free agent, apparently has healed from the shoulder injury that caused him to miss the 1987 season.

“I think Steve looks very good,” Ortmayer said. “We were told he was completely healed and, more importantly, Steve feels he’s completely healed.”

Saunders on the quarterback derby that also includes Mark Malone, Mark Vlasic, Ed Rubbert, Babe Laufenberg and Mike Kelley: “There is no No. 1 quarterback right now.”

Walt Harris, the Tennessee offensive coordinator who recruited the Chargers’ No. 1 draft choice, Anthony Miller, from Pasadena City College, was in California recently and shed more light on how the Volunteers landed Miller.

“The only promise I made to Anthony had to do with what was going to happen on the football field,” Harris said. “I just made a commitment to Anthony that I would get him ready to play football.”

Before he went to Tennessee, Miller had played only one year of high school football and one year in junior college.

“All we had to do at Tennessee was make up our minds that we were going to get him ready,” Harris said. “And I was able to make the promise that if he was ready, he’d get the ball. The reason I was able to make that promise was because I call the offensive plays.”

Harris, admittedly biased, said he prefers Miller over any of the three wide receivers taken ahead of him in the draft.

“I’d love to get (Miami’s) Michael Irvin, (South Carolina’s) Sterling Sharpe and (Notre Dame’s) Tim Brown on the same football field and see who does what. Anthony can flat run it down,” he said.