Chargers cornerback Quentin Jammer will miss a game due to injury for the first time in his career on Sunday, and it's coming against the Colts, an opponent that the Chargers would really prefer not to face without a full complement of defensive backs. Jammer's hamstring injury will cause him to miss Sunday night's game, ending a streak of 72 consecutive starts.
"At my position, I have to be able to run and be able to keep up with guys who run 4.3s and 4.4s (over 40 yards)," Jammer said. "Without that hammy, you can't do that. I need to get it better. ...
I'm going to have to be smart about the injury," Jammer said. "I feel I could probably go, but I felt like I could go last week and it ended up catching again and set me down for another week. I don't want that to keep happening.
Jammer was the fifth overall pick in the 2002 NFL draft, and when evaluating past drafts, I've always found him to be one of the hardest players to judge. Most people considered him, at the time, to be the safest pick on the board: A guy who certainly wouldn't be a total bust but who also might not have as high an upside as some other players available. And that's basically what has happened. You can't call a guy who has started 72 straight games a bust, and he's been a much better player than three of the four guys picked ahead of him (David Carr, Joey Harrington, Mike Williams).
But he also didn't have the upside of the fourth player picked ahead of him, Julius Peppers, and he doesn't look like he'll ever develop into a Pro Bowler. We'll see tomorrow night how much the Chargers miss him, playing against the best quarterback in the league at exploiting weaknesses in opposing secondaries.
