The Los Angeles Chargers started the season with a potential hole in the middle of their defense. Veteran linebacker Denzel Perryman was moved to the IR on roster cut-down day, leaving a gap in the starting linebacker pairing next to Daiyan Henley.
There's plenty of room to criticize what the Chargers defense has accomplished so far. But at the very least, we saw some encouraging improvements—especially among the front seven—in Week 2. The Chargers were able to limit the Las Vegas Raiders on the run. While a large portion of the credit for that falls upon the defensive line, the linebackers deserve their flowers as well—including new starter Del'Shawn Phillips.
It was somewhat surprising to see Phillips listed as the team's second starting linebacker in their first unofficial depth chart of the regular season. After all, he's primarily functioned as a special teams piece throughout his career, including in his first season in Los Angeles in 2025. The Chargers kept Marlowe Wax on the 53-man roster, who was a major standout in the preseason, and they still have the veteran Troy Dye in the fold at the position.
But Phillips has made the most of his opportunity, and his emergence forces a question of what shape the linebacker room will ultimately take when Perryman returns from injury.
Del'Shawn Phillips is the Chargers' most surprising riser over the first two weeks of the season
When I say that Phillips was primarily a special teams piece for much of his career, that's not an exaggeration. The largest defensive snap share he's seen over the course of a whole season is 14%—in 2021 with the New York Jets. Since then, he hasn't even cracked double digits, and he played just 8% of defensive snaps with Los Angeles in 2025.
So why has he seen 59% of the Chargers' defensive snaps through two weeks while Wax and Dye have been relatively blanked?
We got our answer in Week 2.
While Perryman has started to see some athletic decline with age, what he provides alongside Henley is a consistent run-stopping and tackling skill set. With doubts surrounding Junior Colson and the rest of Los Angeles' linebacker room, that's likely the reason why Perryman was brought back on a one-year deal for 2026.
Through two weeks, Phillips has amassed 13 combined tackles, missing just one and posting four 'stops'—which indicate a failed play for the opposing offense. According to Pro Football Focus's system, he posted a run defense grade of 74.5 and a tackling grade of 81.8 in Week 2 against Las Vegas. He looked athletic and energetic triggering downhill, and he served, at least temporarily, as a capable complement to the well-rounded skill set of Henley in the middle of the defense.
There's certainly room to argue the Chargers should give their other complementary pieces in Dye and Wax some run with Perryman out—at the very least to see what they have in that positional group before they enter the main stretch of the season.
But Phillips seems more than capable of hanging onto the starting job for now. There's a real chance that, when Perryman returns to the fold, Chris O'Leary is willing to lean on Phillips as the team's third linebacker. Given the way he's played so far, it's hard to imagine Dye taking immediate precedence over Phillips when the room is whole again.
Either way, though, the Chargers needed someone to step up with Perryman out, and Phillips has (surprisingly) taken that role on wholeheartedly.
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