Omarion Hampton Camp Update — August 23: A Week With Nothing to Grade
2026 NFL Season · Sunday, Aug 23
The starters' preseason appearance lasted three snaps and the game coverage recorded nothing about Hampton at all, while the reserve backs managed thirty-one yards on seventeen carries in the loss. The lead-role read waits another week.
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Omarion Hampton's name does not appear in the reporting on Thursday's 41-to-17 loss to San Francisco. The starters' only series lasted three snaps — the lone rushing attempt on it went for a loss of a yard, per Myles Simmons at Pro Football Talk, with no ballcarrier identified in the coverage we can cite — and after that the backfield work belonged to the reserves, who managed 31 yards on 17 carries collectively, per Thomas Martinez's grades at Sports Illustrated's Chargers site, with undrafted rookie Greg Desrosiers drawing the only praise among the backs. Whether Hampton took a snap at all went unreported. So this files as a quiet week, honestly labeled.
Two things around him did move. The blocking in front of the lead back changed: center Tyler Biadasz is out indefinitely with a knee ligament tear from Tuesday's joint practice, rookie Jake Slaughter has been named the starting center, and left guard remains unsettled, per Martinez and Eric Smith at the team's website — a run game runs through its interior, and this one was just rebuilt on the fly. And the June thread stays what it was: we previewed Hampton as the cleanest situation bet at the position, a vacated lead role plus a coordinator who feeds backs, with availability as the whole risk. Nothing this week touched either half; being kept out of a sloppy exhibition blowout is how teams treat the backs they are counting on, and Mike McDaniel's most-growth praise from earlier in camp remains the loudest evidence on file.
What to watch: whether Hampton gets a real series in Thursday's finale against the Rams — the last preseason look before Arizona — and how the backfield behind him survives the cutdown to 53 next Sunday. We'll check after cut day.
_Data via nflverse._
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