SAN DIEGO -- San Diego Mayor Dick Murphy and two council members asked city officials Monday to explore whether the San Diego Chargers would extend the period when the team could seek a new deal.

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Sunday marked the beginning of the two-month period during which the Chargers can exercise their rights under a 1995 contract with the city to renegotiate or seek to move to another city.

In a memo Monday, Murphy and Councilmen Scott Peters and Ralph Inzunza asked City Attorney Casey Gwinn and City Manager Michael Uberuaga to contact the Chargers to "determine their interest" in discussing delaying the date on which the team could exercise its rights.

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They are seeking a report to the City Council on Dec. 10.

"I think it would be an act of bad faith if the Chargers attempted to trigger prior to the Super Bowl," Murphy said in an interview, referring to the Jan. 26 game in San Diego.

"However, my guess is that the City Council might consider extending the trigger deadline if the Chargers were interested," he added.

He said he thought any extension of the 60-day period should be long enough to give the Citizens Task Force on Chargers Issues time to complete its recommendations.

The panel is charged with seeing if there is a feasible way to keep the team in San Diego. The Chargers want a new stadium in the city.

Chargers representatives have said they believe they have no choice but to trigger the clause, since the task force isn't scheduled to complete its work until after the end of the 60-day period, as it now stands.

A call placed to Chargers special counsel Mark Fabiani was not immediately returned.

Murphy said he couldn't predict how this would play out, but said that if the deadline is extended, the task force could make its recommendations, the City Council would respond to those, "and the Chargers would decide whether they wanted to attempt to trigger at that point."

"I would say that not I do not concede that the Chargers have a legal right to trigger," Murphy said.

The Chargers contract, under which the city invested about $78 million in Qualcomm Stadium improvements, weds the team to the publicly owned stadium through 2020. But there is an out clause beginning with the trigger period that opened Sunday. The team can be shopped to other cities if it exceeds certain NFL salary restrictions.

A team official previously asserted that the conditions were met last season and likely would be this season, too.

If the team believes the trigger was met this season, it must notify the city within 60 days -- although that is the deadline for which city officials are exploring an extension.

That notice would start a 90-day negotiation period with the city, followed by a 180-day period when the Chargers could seek a deal in another town.

San Diego would have 90 days to match any offer presented to the team.

The memo gave credit for the delay idea to Geoff Patnoe, executive director of the San Diego County Taxpayers Association and a member of the Citizens Task Force on Chargers Issues.