Thin Man Gets Hungry : Football: Marquez Pope is lean and ready to get mean to make the Chargers’ secondary. He first has to understand the program.

It might seem hard to figure, but after five days of camp things are moving too fast for Marquez Pope.

Pope, whom the Chargers drafted for his speed, didn’t expect a smooth transition from free safety at Fresno State to NFL cornerback, but he had no idea things were going to be this blurry.

“I knew it was going to be confusing, but I didn’t know I was going to be confused this bad,” Pope said Monday. “It’s different when things start moving. You see it on the board and you can understand it, but when people start moving, that’s what changes the whole atmosphere.”

The Chargers felt the atmosphere needed a little changing at the cornerback spot after last season. So they let veteran Sam Seale, a four-year starter, go to the Raiders as a Plan B free agent and they drafted Pope with the 33rd pick in the draft.

And now he is in a tough battle for a starting cornerback spot with Donald Frank, Anthony Blalock and Sean Vanhorse.

The terminology and formations might be a little blurry for Pope, but General Manager Bobby Beathard thinks they will come more into focus each day.

“He’s a little behind right now,” Beathard said. “Once it all becomes clear in his mind, so he doesn’t have to think about everything, he’ll be fine. There will be a time when he’ll see things much more clearly than he does now. Then the real Marquez will be out there.

“He’s struggling right now. But anybody would be. It’s a big jump. We hope by the end of preseason he can compete for the (starting cornerback) position, but we aren’t disappointed where he is right now.”

But even though he’s struggling, Pope, at 5 feet 10, 192 pounds, can correct many of his mental errors with raw physical skills. It was those raw skills that drew the Chargers to Pope.

Dick Daniels, assistant general manager, went to scout Pope at Fresno State and came away feeling giddy about the prospects of Pope becoming a Charger. Daniels said the Chargers could have drafted a true cornerback to fill their needs. But once he saw Pope work out, Daniels instantly envisioned him as a cornerback.

“When you really go after and you look for a guy with equipment, they’re aren’t very many,” Daniels said. “The guys who have it go early. You’d rather take the guy with the equipment, than the guy who’s played the position before. This guy has the equipment.”

Beathard said there is one piece of equipment that stood out about Pope.

“He’s a terrific competitor, a real tough kid and he’s all football player, but the thing that stands out is how quickly he reacts to things,” Beathard said. “And then his acceleration once he reacts.”

A piece of equipment, Pope says they can’t measure is his desire.

“Even though I’m only 192 pounds, I’m going to carry my weight with my speed,” said Pope, who played high school football at Long Beach Polytechnic High with All-Pro cornerback Mark Carrier. “I’m going to hit you, I don’t care how big you are. You need heart, period, to play this game. I don’t mind knocking myself out as long as I knock them out.

As long as (the ball carrier) knows he got hit by No. 30, it’s all right with me. As long as he says, ‘Damn, who was that?’ ”

Daniels said it was that desire that sold him on Pope being able to play cornerback in the NFL.

“He has that great competitiveness about him that you have to have on that corner to overcome some of the things you’re going to be faced with,” he said. “People have done it. He’ll do it. I don’t have any doubt.”

But what about the blurred vision?

“They’re throwing so much at him,” he said. “You’re not going to get it in nine practices.”

Which is what Pope keeps trying to tell himself.

“I’m a little fish in a big pond,” Pope said. “I’m just going to have to eat my way to the top.”