‘OPEN-MINDED APPROACH : Riley already Has Proven to Be the Antithesis in San Diego to Ex-Coach Gilbride

Mike Riley seems almost too good to be true.

The new coach of the San Diego Chargers does things others in the NFL won’t: he values his players’ opinions, lets his star linebacker make cameo appearances at tight end and is friendly to everyone.

He’s the anti-Kevin Gilbride.

And to listen to the players, Riley is precisely the coach needed by this floundering franchise, which has lost 31 games in three seasons.

“What he has done in a short amount of time is gain the respect of men in this locker room, and we haven’t even played a game yet,” said Junior Seau, the All-Pro linebacker and part-time tight end.

That first game comes Sunday when the Chargers, idle on opening weekend, visit Cincinnati. It’s also the NFL debut for Riley, 46, who helped lead Oregon State -- once described as “a coach’s graveyard” -- back toward respectability before becoming San Diego’s fourth head coach in as many seasons.

Riley’s temperament certainly matches the city where he works.

“He’s the first coach I’ve ever had that has been laid-back and relaxed,” running back Terrell Fletcher said. “Don’t mistake it that he doesn’t have a fiery edge, that he doesn’t have a competitive edge, because he does. It’s just an extremely unique blend, particularly in this business.

“Right now, the guys, we’re giving all we have for him. We’ll lay out in front of trucks for him if we have to.”

Well, maybe they all won’t go that far.

“I’d chase the truck for him, maybe run into it for him,” linebacker Lew Bush said.

“I think he’s exactly what the NFL needs,” Bush said. “We all know that the bottom line is winning, all right? You get a guy in here sometimes who gets so serious and so caught up in, ‘Win, win win, drill, drill, drill,’ that you lose the fun in it. And he’s brought the fun back to the game.”

Riley’s personality and open-minded approach is opposite that of the stubborn, dictatorial Gilbride, who lost the players’ confidence and was fired after six games last year, with a record of 6-16.

The players appreciate that the yelling and belittling have gone away, that there’s less hitting in practice and that Riley lets the assistants do more coaching.

“We still work hard,” Bush said. “When Sunday comes, I’m not going to forget how to hit.”

Then there’s Riley’s reputation as a truly nice guy.

“If you go to heaven and you look around and Mike Riley isn’t there, you’ll know you’re not in heaven,” said John Robinson, Riley’s former boss at USC and now coach at UNLV.

“I’m just not going to have it any other way,” Riley said of his disposition. “I like coming to work and I like the good atmosphere.”

Seau wouldn’t even have approached Gilbride about playing tight end. Riley was receptive because he felt it could only help a team that went 5-11 last year.

“If somebody’s got an idea, I always tell guys, ‘Hey, you can tell me whatever you want to,’ ” Riley said. “It doesn’t mean we’re always going to do it. If they’re thinking about stuff, then that’s what you want.

“I really like people to feel ownership in something, and along with that I want them to feel great about coming to work. I don’t want them to dread coming in the gate over there. I didn’t want the kids at Oregon State to dread coming into the football facility. I want them to feel excited about it.”

That Riley was willing to leave his job as USC’s offensive coordinator to take the Oregon State job for two years says something about him. True, he was going home -- his father, Bud, had been an assistant coach there, and Riley was a star high school quarterback in Corvallis. But the only tradition Oregon State had was that of losing.

The Beavers were 5-6 last season, their best record in 27 years. They came close to upsetting UCLA and did beat rival Oregon, in double overtime.

“He’s not afraid of any challenge,” said general manager Bobby Beathard, whose son, Jeff, played for Riley when he coached the CFL’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Riley also was head coach of San Antonio in the World League for two seasons.

No situation, not even San Diego’s, could be as scary as taking over at Oregon State, Riley said. Yet that was as rewarding an experience as he’s ever had.

“I don’t think that football team, when we first got there, was proud of where they were or who they were or anything,” he said. “But at the end they were excited to be Beaver football players and that made me feel good.”

If only the same can happen for the Chargers, who don’t want their nice guy to finish last.

Riley’s approach “is something special and it’s something you would want to win for,” Seau said. “We just want to make him successful here in San Diego.”