There is the perception going around that Ryan Mathews is put in a difficult position because he is following in the footsteps of a future hall of famer after San Diego traded up 16 places in the first round to snag him.

The reality is, the expectations pundits seem to be putting on Mathews may not exactly stack up to what is truly needed out of the Fresno State Alum.

Gaudy regular season stats are nice, and putting up 1,200-1,400 yards looks great on paper for a team looking to add to an already high-octane offense.

But San Diego is a team that has not had issue with the regular season.  Even with the league’s second-worst running game in 2009, the team managed to put together a massive run en route to the AFC’s No. 2 seed and a first round playoff bye.

San Diego fans know that this has become Philip Rivers’ team, and will operate through him first and foremost. Where Mathews comes in is as an augmentation to keep defenses from either flooding coverage or keying in on the San Diego signal caller.

In other words, give the team an added dimension in the playoffs so they can handle the increased defensive pressure laid out by postseason teams.

LaDainian Tomlinson’s legacy in that venue is not going to be terribly difficult for Mathews to live up to, nothing like the hall of fame proportions he is presumed to be measured against.

For those that feel his 2009 12-attempt, 24-yard performance is out of form for the team, take this into account: Over the past three seasons comprising six playoff games Tomlinson had 47 attempts for 146 yards (or roughly 2.6 yards per carry).

Within that context, what San Diego’s newest back needs to do in order to reach expectations is to log at least 15 carries and average better than three yards per attempt while converting on a couple key third and short situations. 

That simple goal translates to what San Diego needs out of its running game to be a successful team, and that success is what fans are going to judge this changing of the guard via, not what numbers Mathews puts on the stat sheet.

San Diego has had its share of great running and regular season success over the past years. What it has lacked is any resemblance of that in the playoffs, which is where Ryan Mathews is truly expected to help San Diego take a leap forward.

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Nevertheless, with no starting positions announced, wide receiver Roy Williams took the liberty of stating his position within the Dallas Cowboys organization for all who may be wondering.

“I said when I first got here, ain't no such thing as me sitting on the bench,” Williams stated while participating in a golf outing with the Cowboys' corporate sponsors. "Never in my life."

What prompted the question was a combination of Williams’ poor 2009 showing coupled with both the emergence of undrafted wideout Miles Austin and the recent drafting of top-rated wide receiver Dez Bryant.

Austin appears to be a lock at one of the two starting positions, having established a great rapport with quarterback Tony Romo en route to a 1,320-yard breakout season.

Opposite Austin, Williams will need to battle Bryant, a rookie whose potential top-10 draft stock dropped considerably due to character concerns following a suspension that sidelined him during the 2009 NCAA season. 

That talent, along with Dallas trading up to select him, speaks of the team’s hope that Bryant will be a dynamic force at the wide receiver position, something he cannot do while buried on the depth chart.

Williams, on the other hand, translated a load of talent and high expectations into one of the more dismal seasons among supposed No. 1 receivers last year.

His 38 receptions ranked 107th among pass-catchers, though he fared slightly better in yardage, ranking 67th in the league, at 596 yards. 

That (lack of) production was not for want of Romo’s attention. Williams was targeted 86 times by the Dallas signal-caller but came away with the league’s fourth-worst reception percentage, hauling down only 45 percent of balls thrown to him.

It might also be noted that two of the three behind Williams in this metric were rookies (Oakland’s Louis Murphy and Cleveland’s Mohamed Massaquoi) while the third (Bryant Johnson) played on an abysmal Detroit Lions team.

To begin the year Williams may still bear the title of incumbent, if for no other reason than to justify the high price Dallas gave for him when the team acquired him from Detroit in 2008. Especially in the wake of players like Brandon Marshall, Anquan Boldin, and Santonio Holmes going for anywhere from reasonable value (Marshall for two second-round draft picks) to bargain-basement prices (Holmes for a fifth).

That said, if Williams gets off to a similar start in the upcoming year, all the talk in the world will not keep him from the bench in an attempt to give Dez Bryant the opportunity to shine. 

Should that come to pass, Williams may just find himself somewhere else he has never been next offseason—unemployed.

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What this tells us if nothing else is that Merriman has no intention of playing 2010 under the restricted free agent tender ascribed to him by the San Diego Chargers early in the offseason.

That tender, which would have offered up over $3 million in salary this year while allowing Merriman to troll the market as an unrestricted free agent in 2011, drew the pass-rushing linebacker’s ire after he felt he deserved a long term contract representative of three elite seasons.

San Diego general manager A.J. Smith felt otherwise.  With last year’s first-round pick Larry English waiting in the wings and a 2009 season plagued by nagging injuries, the team remained unsettled on Merriman’s ability to truly regain his early career form.

It has been reported that at least three different deals were in the works to move Merriman to another team, two of which reached advanced stages before Condon put a wrecking ball to each when he shot down all contract offers the Chargers' prospective trade partners put his way.

Moving on from a contender was not a factor as the Super Bowl Champion New Orleans Saints were among the teams attempting to negotiate for the linebacker’s services (though his fit within a 4-3 could be questioned).

Having failed to either secure a deal or trade, San Diego has not been shy about keeping him on the trading block, though efforts have been slowed by a historically contentious relationship between Smith and super-agent Condon, who also represents departed Chargers running back Ladainian Tomlinson.

Unloading Condon could pave the way to Merriman’s contract demands slipping down into a more reasonable status, which could speed along the trade process, although the impact of the lengthy ordeal may still be felt.

With the draft come and passed, San Diego will most likely pursue a 2011 draft pick over a player-for-player swap. This means they will have no immediate recompense for Merriman, drafting OLB insurance or simply putting the pick towards another position of need.

That concern is unfortunate but ultimately easy to overcome as the team would then benefit from an already top-heavy 2011 draft where they would have just that much more drafting power to either collect players New England Patriots-style or leverage those choices into trading up.

What pairs with it is the idea that Merriman’s value drops the longer his status remains unadressed.

Teams in need of a pass-rush have already taken steps to address the concern, be it via the draft (Miami and Koa Misi) or free agency (Arizona and Joey Porter).  As the market goes down, so does the price.

What initially was thought of as getting respectable value for a departing player while they can may just wind up being a case of unloading a dissident for a bargain-price just to have the headache done with (see Holmes, Santonio).

Either way, there is hope now that agent David Dunn can help bring this issue to a close quickly, regardless of the outcome.

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