The Los Angeles Chargers have spent the better part of a decade building their defense around Derwin James Jr., and the league’s evaluators just reaffirmed the investment. In ESPN’s annual survey of coaches, executives and scouts, published Thursday by Jeremy Fowler, James was voted the NFL’s No. 2 safety for 2026, trailing only Baltimore’s Kyle Hamilton.
The placement marks a four-spot climb from a year ago. One voter listed James as the best safety in football, and none ranked him lower than fifth. Hamilton again drew the bulk of the first-place votes, but the distance between the top two was the point evaluators kept returning to.
James earned the ranking with the most complete season of his career. He played all 16 games in 2025 — no small thing for a player whose early years were interrupted by injury — and finished with 94 tackles, two sacks, seven passes defensed, three interceptions that tied his career high, and a forced fumble. The season carried him to a fifth Pro Bowl and second-team All-Pro honors, the third All-Pro nod of his career.
It also followed the three-year, $75.6 million extension the Chargers handed him this spring, weeks before voting began — a deal that keeps the 30-year-old in Los Angeles as the defense’s organizing piece. Coordinators build their disguises around a safety who can line up deep, walk into the box, or travel with a slot receiver without tipping the coverage, and James remains one of the few trusted to do all three on the same drive.
For a franchise often defined by the seasons that got away, the ranking is a rare piece of settled ground heading into training camp. Veterans report July 28, and James will anchor a secondary playing in front of a defense the Chargers expect to carry them. At No. 2, he is no longer a young star to project. He is the measuring stick other safeties are held against.
