Richards Senses a Change in Chargers : Pro football: After agreeing to contract terms with Beathard, the lineman meets with new Coach Bobby Ross. Richards likes what he hears.

LA JOLLA —  David Richards reached a tentative agreement with Charger General Manager Bobby Beathard, but before signing the contract Tuesday, he insisted on meeting with Coach Bobby Ross.

“I figured I’d meet with Ross,” Richards said, “and then walk out of camp unsigned. I was expecting a confrontation. I had no idea. . . .”

A poor team performance and the anonymity of his position have obscured his accomplishments, but Richards has been one of this team’s most productive players the past four seasons. When the Chargers have run the ball, as they have done so well, they have broken free behind his blocking at right guard.

He has started since the day he arrived as a fourth-round draft pick, and he has not missed a regular-season game or practice . Although unsigned, he reported to all of the team’s off-season voluntary workouts.

In the past, however, this has not been enough for the Chargers. They have never fully appreciated Richards’ consistent contributions. They look at David Richards and his 323 pounds in a uniform, and they are reminded of cats in a sack fighting for release.

Last season they hit him with $3,500 in fines for weighing too much despite his all-out effort each week to please the team.

“I wouldn’t eat all day Thursday,” he said, “and then before our weigh-in each Friday morning I would put on three sweat tops, put a towel over my head and run for 40 minutes on a treadmill at 5 m.p.h. I could lose 12 pounds doing that.”

This off-season the team made it known that Richards was going to have to weigh 308 pounds to play for the Chargers. That’s a problem--the problem that drove Richards to meet with Ross.

“This is football,” Richards said. “It’s not a beauty contest. It’s my body type; I carry all my weight right around the middle.

“Even when I was a little kid--well, I was never a little kid--even when I was younger, I had love handles. I had a belly and love handles no matter how strong I got, no matter how much I lifted and ran. It’s like a camel has its humps.”

Richards believes the team should put more weight in his performance than on what the scales indicate or how he looks in a uniform. He told Beathard that Ross needed to know how he felt.

“When I went to see Coach Ross I had a hornets’ nest in my stomach,” Richards said. “I thought, ‘Oh, God, this is a confrontational moment.’

“But you know what, he made it non-confrontational. It was not going to be a gnashing of teeth. Instead, he said, ‘I wish you had come to me earlier.’ That’s something I’m learning.

“I didn’t know what to expect with a new coach coming in. After being here during the years that I’ve been here, you expect the worst. However, I got absolutely nothing but positive things out of Coach Ross. Every time I come to him I realize I can keep on coming to him. I’m not used to that.”

Ross struck a compromise with Richards, but he still greeted his arrival in camp with a fine for being overweight.

“That was all right,” Richards said. “We had a good talk, and it was the principle of the thing. I know now that if I can handle the weight and not get tired and get out of shape, they will let me weigh whatever I want to weigh so as long as my body-fat percentage is not out of line. That sounds fair to me.”

A sense of fairness is very important to Richards. He accepted Beathard’s contract proposal Tuesday “because he went out of his way to make things easy this year; it wouldn’t have been right to hold out any longer.”

Richards has been the consummate team player in competition, but he can also be fiercely independent. His quest for fairness convinced Richards to add his name to Freeman McNeil’s lawsuit against the National Football League.

“I was faced with a system that I thought was wrong,” Richards said. “I felt like standing up for what I believed in. It took me five minutes to make the decision; I think I was the third guy to sign up.

“Yeah, it was dangerous, but I hated my offensive line coach (Larry Beightol) at the time and I figured if they got mad enough to trade me over the lawsuit, I’d get away from him, at least.”

Richards testified for five hours at the trial in Minneapolis. A Washington-based economist, appearing on behalf of the eight players who filed suit against the NFL, testified Monday that Richards lost an estimated $473,000 to $480,000 because of the league’s restrictive free-agency system.

“Even with this lawsuit thing, the last thing I want to sound like is a rebel or renegade,” he said. “That’s not what it is all about. I just want the record set straight. People have no concept on the restrictions that keep NFL players from moving.

“I’m going to get a settlement out of this, but more than anything, I’m going to get the satisfaction of being someone who stood up for something that they thought was right. The Chargers know I’m not a troublemaker. All I want to do is make sure that players in the league now and players in the future get a fair a deal.”

Richards insisted on signing a one-year contract with the Chargers, and after some reluctance, Beathard agreed. Richards said he wants to consider free agency if it becomes available, as most expect, following the outcome of the McNeil lawsuit.

“It’s not because I want to leave,” he said. “Who knows? If we have a great season with Bobby Ross--this is my third head coach--and I fall in love with what he’s doing and fall in love playing football again, then yeah, I want to play here. I’ll sign a five-year deal.

“But with all the change and stuff here, maybe at the end of year I will want to get out because I’m so miserable. Whatever, I want the option.”