David Njoku Camp Update — August 23: Still No Game Tape

David Njoku has now gone two preseason games without appearing in the game coverage. Thursday's 41-to-17 loss to San Francisco produced no reported Njoku snaps, targets or catches in the accounts we can cite — the night's only starters' completion went to a different tight end, Charlie Kolar, on Justin Herbert's nine-yard throw during the lone three-snap series, per Myles Simmons at Pro Football Talk, before the game fell to the reserves. No injury designation attaches to Njoku anywhere in the week's reporting either; he is simply absent from the record, which for a veteran on a one-year deal in late August most often means managed, not missing.

The June preview set his season up as a question of which Njoku arrives — the 80-catch lead tight end of the big year or the diminished complement of the final Cleveland season — with the contract and the beat both voting complement: hedge money, and second-year Oronde Gadsden holding the inside track on the top job. A silent August neither threatens nor advances that. What it does do is leave the room's hierarchy entirely to inference, and the inferences got more crowded this week, not less: Gadsden also went unreported against San Francisco, and Kolar caught the one ball thrown to the position with the starters on the field. Jim Harbaugh has called this group four deep, per earlier reporting from the team's site, and four deep is exactly how it is behaving.

What to watch: whether Njoku takes the field Thursday against the Rams in the final preseason game, where he lines up if the starters play longer than a series, and how many tight ends survive the cutdown to 53 next Sunday. We'll check after cut day.

_Data via nflverse._