Being a third round draft pick and not having the greatest of Junior seasons for California doesn’t bode all that well for Keenan Allen, but the wide receiver thinks he has a very good chance to start for the San Diego Chargers in 2013.

At the moment, Malcolm Floyd is the team’s number one guy, catching 56 passes for 814 yards, with Danario Alexander coming up as the number two option. There’s also Vincent Brown, who had big things expected of him in 2012 but ended up not playing a single snap because of his broken ankle, while Eddie Royal looks like the man who’s going to occupy the slot.

But the new regime in San Diego inherited all those guys, unlike Allen, the 6’2 prospect who looked like a first round pick during the pre-draft talk but slipped down to the third round, as happens quite often with wide receivers, who was handpicked by them, which surely means they have plans for him to beat at least one or two other guys for the starting jobs.

Allen himself is very confident. I’m a starter. That’s what I feel like — I’m a starter. Great character. Great team play. I’ll try to make an impact as soon as I get there. My work ethic is there. I’m determined to be successful. I don’t want to watch. I want to be part of the moment. I don’t want to watch it.

According to Mike McCoy, Allen has been doing a good job so far, as the coaches move him around the different wide receiver positions, trying to get a better feeling of what his best attributes are.

With that in mind, the Chargers’ passing game has struggled over the last couple of seasons, and not because of the lack of talent at wide receiver. Philip Rivers hasn’t been doing well, feeling too much pressure due to the holes in the offensive line. Without that issue being fixed, it doesn’t really matter what names line up on the edges of the scrimmage line.

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