The loss of any superstar hurts a team in the NFL, but Derwin James isn’t just any superstar. After just one season, the Los Angeles Chargers safety has supplanted himself as one of the league’s best defenders — he was first-team All-Pro at safety — and the ideal player for the modern NFL.

So, of course, it was a blow to the Chargers and the NFL to find out James will be sidelined with a stress fracture. The latest time frame has James missing about three months of the season.

 

For a normal injury, a team could insert another player — albeit usually one less talented — to fill the role of the lost player, but that one-for-one swap is nearly impossible for the Chargers because of how much James did on the field for a defense that ranked eighth in defensive DVOA last season.

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The 17th overall pick of the 2018 NFL Draft (yes, that is still insane) was a key to everything the Chargers did in 2018. First, he never came off the field. James played 99.1 percent of the team’s defensive snaps. The versatility and success can’t be overstated.

He was one of the league’s best deep safeties, one of the league’s best box safeties, one of the league’s best slot defenders, and one of the league’s best edge rushers. That’s not a one-man job, but it was for James in 2018. At any point he in a game, he could line up at any position. Per Pro Football Focus, James had 418 snaps in the box, 216 at deep safety, 205 on the edge, 166 in the slot, and 22 out wide at corner.

Pass Rush

James was fifth among safeties with 54 pass rushes last season. His 31.5 percent pressure rate led a group of seven safeties with at least 40 pass rushes on the year (Jamal Adams was next at 27.1 percent and only Budda Baker was also over 25 percent). James had one of the best pass-rushing performances by a safety over the past three seasons, per Sports Info Solutions.

The chart below shows 80 safeties from 2016 to 2018 with at least 20 pass rushes in a season. James (blue star) is already in an exclusive group just by the number of pass rushes he had in 2018, but his production is well above the expectation and his total pressures come in second among the group, behind only Adams, who had more rush snaps.

It’s not that just James was productive as a pass rusher, it’s how he was productive — a perfect combination of smooth and smart. The below play is from his first NFL game, Week 1 against the Kansas City Chiefs. Two plays before, James had run with D’Anthony Thomas and broke up a pass in the end zone. Here he lined up to the left side of the offense.

James started his rush against left tackle Eric Fisher (72) and used a fake step toward the outside. That was enough to make Fisher turn his attention to the stunt that happened between the defensive end and middle linebacker. But as soon as Fisher turned his head, James cut back and chased Patrick Mahomes down from behind.

Coverage

There wasn’t a place on the field James couldn’t cover. He was tied for 14th in the league with 13 passes defensed. He was one of two players, along with Adams, to have 10 passes defensed and 10 pass pressures. James’s plays on the ball were spread all over the field, but he was notably good as a deep defender. He tied for second with Jason McCourty in passes defensed on plays 20 or more yards down the field (five). Only Darius Slay (seven) had more. While deep defense might sound like a safety’s responsibility, those playing the ball in that area are mostly cornerbacks. James was the only safety in top-18 of passes defensed that deep down the field.

James wasn’t asked to go sideline to sideline, but he was able to show off his deep range when needed, like this pass breakup against Antonio Brown and the Pittsburgh Steelers (the ball was caught by Brown but James got over in time to knock him out of bounds and force the pass to be incomplete).

It’s also arguable there was no better defender against tight ends than James in 2018. By Adjusted Yards allowed per attempt (which weights yards per attempts with touchdowns and interceptions), James led 91 players who saw at least 10 targets against tight ends with a minus-2.68 AY/A allowed. The next best was Justin Simmons of the Denver Broncos at minus-1.68. Adrian Amos (minus-1.07) was the only other player with negative AY/A allowed.

James looks even better by coverage snap. There were 18 players with at least 100 coverage snaps responsible for a tight end, per SIS charting, and James led the way with minus-0.48 Adjusted Yards per coverage snap.

On the below play from Week 16 against the Baltimore Ravens, James was on the line of scrimmage for a 3rd and 6. He lined up on the left side of the offense (bottom of screen) and gave a pressure look inside the defensive end. At the snap, he dropped back and waited for tight end Hayden Hurst to chip block before he released into his route. James then chased him down across the field and dove in front of him for a pass breakup and fourth down.

Nickel & Dime

The singular performance alone would be enough to qualify as a catastrophic loss for the Chargers, but James and his versatility were so central to the overall structure of the defense. Last season, due to defensive back talent and lack thereof at linebacker, the Chargers spent 64 percent of their defensive snaps with six or more defensive backs on the field. No team played Dime-plus more than the Chargers. The next closest team was the Green Bay Packers at 41 percent.

Los Angeles was about to do this because of a player like James, who could bounce from edge rusher to slot corner to deep safety to box safety in the span of four plays. Without James in the middle, the ease in which the Chargers can stay in a defensive back-heavy scheme becomes infinitely more difficult.

Casey Hayward has slot and outside versatility as a cornerback, as does Desmond King, who can also play a bit of safety and might be one of the most underrated defenders in the league. The Chargers still have a good starting safety in Adrian Phillips and they added Nasir Adderly in the draft. Linebacker could also be a more reliable position in 2019 with the addition of Thomas Davis and a potentially healthy Denzel Perryman. Kyzir White is currently a linebacker, who was a college safety at West Virginia.

Talent is certainly still there for the Chargers, even without James. But all of these players are going to have to chip in and fill the role one superstar was able to handle on his own last season. The Chargers, and the NFL, will be worse off without one of the league’s best and most fun defenders for the next few months.