The Chargers defense suffered a big blow last week when safety Derwin James was diagnosed with a stress fracture in his foot that required surgery.
James is expected to miss 3-4 months while recovering, which leaves the Chargers trying to fill the void left by a player who was named an All-Pro while playing 1,027 snaps as a rookie. Adrian Phillips will be involved in that effort, but he was clear on Tuesday that replacing James in the lineup won’t be a one-man job.
“I’m not stepping into this position to be anything that Derwin was,” Phillips said, via the Los Angeles Times. “I’ve played a lot of snaps in my career. I played a whole bunch of snaps last year. We got to the playoffs, and we were able to make a lot of plays. So it’s not necessarily thinking of replacing Derwin. It’s, ‘Hey, this is a little bump in the road. We gotta fix it . . . and keep it moving.’ When you start thinking you’re replacing somebody or you have to live up to what somebody else has done, that’s when all the bad stuff starts to happen.”
James lined up all over the field as a rookie and the Chargers have emphasized versatility from their defensive backs this offseason after using seven of them to cover for missing linebackers at times late last season. They’ll likely need to be equally creative to avoid a major drop in performance with James out of the picture.