EL SEGUNDO — Rookie linebacker Junior Colson continued his long, slow return to something resembling full-speed football after undergoing an appendectomy last month. In fact, he made a menace of himself in the Chargers’ backfield several times Wednesday on Day 17 of training camp.
Slowly but certainly, Colson has increased his level of activity, going from working alone on the sidelines with members of the athletic training staff in the opening days of camp to joining his teammates for 7-on-7 and 11-on-11 drills this week. What comes next remains to be determined, however.
“I’m not 100 percent sure about that,” Chargers defensive coordinator Jesse Minter said when asked if Colson was getting closer to playing in one of the team’s two remaining exhibition games, either Saturday against the Rams at SoFi Stadium or on Aug. 24 against the Cowboys in Dallas.
Although his participation has been limited in camp, Colson has not been a forgotten man on the Chargers’ roster. After all, he played for Minter and Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh for the past three years and was a member of the national championship team that went 15-0 in the 2023 season.
The Chargers’ coaches know him well.
“We drafted him where we drafted him for a really good reason,” Minter said, referring to the Chargers’ third-round selection of Colson in the NFL draft in April. “We think he’s a really good player. It’s funny. I used to tell scouts at Michigan, ‘Hey, he’s a sideline-to-sideline linebacker who can play all three downs.’
“I think he still has a really high ceiling.”
Colson’s journey to the NFL was an unusual one. He was born in Haiti and adopted by an American family after the disastrous 2010 earthquake. He began to play football while living with his adoptive family in suburban Nashville, Tennessee, and was highly recruited, eventually signing with Michigan.
“Just being a little bit new to football, you know, only six or seven or eight years ago, so I’m excited about his potential,” Minter said. “I just want to get him out there and throw him into the competition and see where it shakes out.”
Colson has another journey to take before he can be considered a candidate for a starting position, however. At the moment, he’s listed as a third-team linebacker on the Chargers’ unofficial depth chart, trailing behind starters Denzel Perryman and Daiyan Henley and backups Nick Niemann and Troy Dye.
At this point, he’s running behind the others, but for how long?
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“Obviously, he’s a guy I know very well and have a good idea about what he knows about our defense, but I want to see him do it at this level against this caliber of players,” Minter said of competing against NFL players. “Excited to continue to see him ramp it up.”
EXTRA POINTS
Quarterback Justin Herbert spent another day in a walking boot on his right foot to protect a plantar fascia injury. The Chargers said Aug. 1 in announcing his injury that he would wear the boot for approximately two weeks. There has been no update on his progress or lack thereof from the team. …
The Chargers continued to churn the bottom of their depth chart, as General Manager Joe Hortiz said in the spring that he might do. They signed Tucker Fisk, a tight end who played with the Atlanta Falcons last season. Fisk was a tight end/defensive end at Stanford from 2018 to ’21. …
Wide receiver Ladd McConkey, a second-round pick from Georgia, made two exceptional catches along the sidelines to highlight the offense during another day in which the quarterbacks struggled to move the ball. Quarterback Luis Perez threw both passes to McConkey, who hauled them in easily.