Chargers safety Derwin James had offseason shoulder surgery that has limited him during the early part of minicamp, reports USA Today’s Tyler Dragon (on Twitter). While James is limited, it’s a good sign that he’s already on the field, and Dragon notes that the defensive back is expected to be a full participant by the time training camp comes around.
[RELATED: Latest On Derwin James Extension Talks]
“Derwin didn’t participate in any of the seven-on-seven this spring because of him coming off the labrum surgery,” coach Brandon Staley told reporters (via ESPN’s Lindsey Thiry). “We wanted to make sure he stayed out of the competitive seven-on-seven. He did all the individual work … he was in all our 11-on-11 team stuff.”
“It was more just precautionary in nature and if you know anything about Derwin, it killed him that he wasn’t out there, for sure.”
James missed a pair of contests in 2021 because of a hamstring injury, but he otherwise started 15 games. As Thiry observes, James did land on the injury report early in the season with a shoulder ailment, but it didn’t force him to miss any time. The former first-round pick earned his second Pro Bowl nod in 2021 after finishing with 118 tackles, two sacks, three forced fumbles, and two interceptions. The safety was limited to only five games in 2019 before sitting out the 2020 campaign, so it was a positive sign for both the player and organization that he could return to his Pro Bowl status.
With James entering the final year of his rookie contract, Dragon tweets that the two sides have started “preliminary” discussions on a long-term deal. There have been recent reports that the organization and the safety were both optimistic that they’d agree on an extension before the start of next season. The two sides are expected to continue negotiating with the expectation that they’ll agree to a deal before the start of next season.
Derwin is a great player when healthy,but signing him to a long-term contract is a risk for the chargers. I would think that any long-term contract would have a lot of incentives built-into it.