Things just got extremely rough for the Chargers with rookie running back Omarion Hampton being placed on IR after suffering an ankle injury Sunday against the Washington Commanders. Hampton will miss at least the next four weeks of the season.
Two weeks prior against the Denver Broncos, Najee Harris suffered a season-ending Achilles injury. Both starting running backs are now injured for the Chargers, leaving the team in a precarious situation.
The running backs currently active and healthy are Hassan Haskins and Kimani Vidal. The sky has quickly become a lot more grey for Chargers fans only five weeks into the season. The Chargers will be running with their RB3 & RB4 until close to mid-November.
But it didn't have to be that way.
Chargers fumbled away their Omarion Hampton replacement
A name most Chargers fans and potentially staff wish they still had on the roster is Raheim “Rocket” Sanders. It was a total shock to many when the Chargers' front office made the decision to cut the UDFA from the 53-man roster. Now, that decision huants them even more.
Sanders is a power back with extreme potential. He played his final college season out of South Carolina with the Gamecocks where he had a total scrimmage yards of 1,197 and 13 TDs.
The Chargers instantly found themselves in a spot where Sanders would have been great after Hampton was hurt. With 8:27 left in the fourth quarter, the Chargers had the ball on the Commanders 1-yard-line. On second and goal, they ran the ball with Kimani Vidal, and the play got blown up for a loss of 2 yards. Justin Herbert threw a tipped-pass interception on third down, essentially ending the game.
That entire sequence, and the game itself, could have been different with a stronger back in the backfield to take over for Hampton.
If the Chargers had kept Sanders, they would have that power back in the red zone that they will desperately need moving forward. The Cleveland Browns used Sanders in the red zone in Week 1 for a rushing touchdown against the Bengals.
Injuries are unfortunately bound to happen in the NFL and it becomes next man up, but when the “next man up” situation feels like it could be a lot stronger, it starts to make you wonder what the thought process was back when cuts were made.
You can only hope that Vidal and Haskins have some juice to power through until Hampton returns but the question marks on front office decision-making continues to be worrisome when it comes to the depth chart.