On a beautiful southern California morning, Marty Schottenheimer was talking about the 2002 San Diego Chargers.

"The good thing about the players here is that winning is important to them. And they are willing to work hard to that end. We had an excellent, excellent off-season. We had tremendous participation in the off-season program, averaging over 50 guys a day.

"Everybody in this league has talent. And we have a good football team here. There are depth issues, of course. But that's true of everybody in this league because there are so many teams. Having said that, what we need to do here is learn how to win. That's really it. It's an attitude at this juncture. But we've been working on that and the team has responded favorably to it."

Schottenheimer may not have won a Super Bowl in his NFL career, but he has won, taking the Browns and Chiefs to the playoffs 11 times combined. His Chiefs made the postseason six straight times from 1990 to 1995, with two playoff wins in 1993, capping Schottenheimer's best year.

But how do you communicate "winning" to your new professional football team? Show them a reel of your big wins? Tell a lot of stories that begin with, "I remember when Joe Montana played for me, and he …"?

No. You do it in small ways that build up over time. In a rookie-laden pre-training camp session, Marty Schottenheimer rammed the message home with forcefully delivered ideas on a practice field.

Just before a run to loosen the team up: "Focus on what you are doing now. Let's get something out of this."

Just before stretching exercises. And Schottenheimer's is the only voice: "Let's get our minds on our business, men."

Walking up to a prone player having trouble executing a particular stretch: "Shoulders are OFF the ground for this!"

During a lull between practice drills: "We're burning daylight! Come on!"

(If this all seems a bit obvious, remember that the Chargers finished 2001 with nine straight losses. Where would you start?)

Once the team had settled into seven-on-seven drills, Schottenheimer called out my favorite one of the day: "This is the play, men. This is the play. All the others don't matter."

Then as the practice wound down, one last exhortation: "We need six good plays. One at a time. One play at a time. We just had six good ones, now six more. One play at a time, men. One play at a time."

If Marty Schottenheimer were any more old-school, he'd write with a quill. Then again, football is the most "old-school" sport. His way works.

After practice, one of Schottenheimer's key veterans seemed pretty happy. "The important thing is that our focus has narrowed a bit. We have one goal. To win a world's championship," said safety Ryan McNeil. "We can't get into comparing and contrasting coaching styles. We want to win. We had an opportunity to win last year. We didn't do it. The good thing about this year is the clean slate. We added some guys, we lost some guys. But when the roster is set, we'll have a pretty damn good team."

One play at a time. One player at a time, too.

John Hassan is covering NFL training camps for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail john.hassan@espnmag.com.