David Njoku Camp Update — August 31: Three Tight Ends, No Order
2026 NFL Season · Monday, Aug 31
The Chargers kept all three healthy tight ends — Njoku, Oronde Gadsden and Charlie Kolar — and their own depth chart lists the trio with ORs and no separation. Njoku finished the preseason without appearing in any game account we can cite, with no injury designation anywhere in the reporting.
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The Chargers' cutdown kept all three healthy tight ends — Oronde Gadsden, Charlie Kolar and David Njoku — per Eric Smith at chargers.com, with the fourth name in the room, Scott Matlock, going to injured reserve with a designation to return. And the team's own August 20-fourth depth chart declines to sort them: the tight end line reads "Charlie Kolar OR Oronde Gadsden OR David Njoku," two ORs, no starter named. The closest thing to a hierarchy answer the window produced is an explicit refusal to give one.
Njoku's own preseason closed the way it ran. The CBS Sports box score from Thursday's finale carries no Njoku line and the team's recap doesn't mention him, and the one tight end catch with the starters went to Kolar for the second straight game, a nine-yarder from Justin Herbert. That makes three preseason games without a citable Njoku appearance — an absence from the record, which is not the same as an absence from the field, and no injury designation attaches to him anywhere in the week's reporting. The August 20-third episode read a veteran's silent August as managed rather than missing; that was inference then and it is inference now, and no source has said either way. The team's roster note leans on pedigree: a former first-round pick with 26 career touchdown catches inside the 20-yard line, per chargers.com.
The August 20-third watch items resolve as follows: whether he took the field Thursday went unreported; where he lines up went unanswered on a four-play starters' script; and the tight end count came in at three, every healthy body kept.
The June preview set this 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 and Gadsden holding the inside track. Nothing in August contradicted that, and nothing advanced it. The hierarchy goes to Week One unresolved, which means the first real snap counts will say more than the entire preseason did. We'll read them when they exist.
_Data via nflverse._
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