PRO FOOTBALL REPORT : WEEKDAY UPDATE : CHARGERS : Mills Another Victim of Warmups

It’s been that kind of year for the Chargers . . .

Two weeks ago, they lost wide receiver Nate Lewis in pregame practice with a quadriceps muscle injury. Prior to Sunday’s debacle in Pittsburgh, the team lost linebacker Jeff Mills in warmups with a hamstring pull.

“He was supposed to be in on four different special-teams packages and he pulled up before the game,” Coach Dan Henning said. “He had a little twinge on Thursday, but in pregame he had to leave the field. He missed the entire game.”

Lewis was the AFC’s third-best kickoff returner before being injured.

“I would doubt that Lewis will be ready this week,” Henning said. “His injury is an area that doesn’t heal as quickly as say a hamstring. If he goes out on Astroturf and tries to burst on it and it isn’t completely healed, it will go again.”

The San Francisco 49ers gave a tryout Tuesday to former Chargers’ running back Thomas Sanders.

Sanders signed a three-year $1.665 million contract as a Plan B free agent with the Chargers, but was released on the final cut after failing to win a starting assignment.

San Francisco running back Roger Craig injured a knee, and while the 49ers hold out hope for his return in a week, they are making preparations in the event he has to go on injured reserve.

The Chargers received advance copies of Sports Illustrated’s “A Burt’s Eye View,” Tuesday. The five-page feature article on defensive lineman Burt Grossman will receive cover-boy treatment in this week’s issue.

In the article, Henning says of his player: “It’s Burt against the world, and the world against Burt. Nobody is safe because he doesn’t care how many adversaries he has, and he never really takes a full-time ally. It isn’t as if Burt’s going to gather a group around himself and become powerful. He wants to stand alone.”

Henning said there is nothing wrong with the Chargers’ defensive design. It’s the players, he said.

For example, he said, if an outside pass rusher chooses on his own to take an inside route to the quarterback to get a sack, the team may suffer.

“After a certain period of time in the defense, if you take that type of chance and you make a sack, everybody cheers,” Henning said. “But it catches up to you later when you start to let people do what they think is best for them and not within the scheme. That’s some of things that are going on in there.”

Henning said the players need to understand that the defensive plans are sound.

“I’ve done a study here in the last two days with the coaches and a couple of our players on our third-down defensive package,” Henning said. “We took a sack reel of film out to determine where our sacks are coming, and I don’t see anything wrong with our scheme of defense. None whatsoever.

“We just don’t play it as well as we did at the end of last year,” he said.

Rookie wide receiver Walter Wilson was limping badly Monday, but Henning said he was amazed to see him still standing after watching Sunday’s tapes.

“Did you see the shot he got?” Henning said. “Watching it on film, the fact that he’s even walking is just amazing. He got his leg bent completely out of shape. He’s got a sprained ankle and a soreness around the knee.

“If a doctor looked at the injury (on film), he’s looking at an operation. He happens to be a flexible guy in the area of the knee joint and the ankle joint. If I stop the movie at a certain point, you say there’s no way the leg can’t be broken. Then if you stop it a little later down, you say there’s no way there can’t be a knee injury.

“It’s as bad a looking thing as I’ve ever seen on film. And yet he comes out of the game, and then goes back in and plays.”

Henning, however, said it may be Thursday before it can be determined whether Wilson will be able to play Sunday against the Jets.

Henning said he expects Courtney Hall to be recovered sufficiently from a hamstring pull to start at left guard, and said he won’t know until today if Vencie Glenn’s sore ankle will allow him to practice.