Is Omarion Hampton a fantasy football starting option in Week 1? Latest intel on Chargers RB

Mike Moraitis

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Is Omarion Hampton a fantasy football starting option in Week 1? Latest intel on Chargers RB image

Fantasy football owners who have stock in Los Angeles Chargers running backs Najee Harris and Omarion Hampton have a tough decision to make in Week 1.

The Chargers drafted Hampton in the first round of the 2025 NFL draft and there is no doubt he's going to have at least a sizeable role in his first season in the league.

However, Los Angeles also has Harris, who signed a one-year, $5.25 million deal in free agency during the offseason. There was some doubt about Harris' status for this week as he continued to recover from an eye injury suffered in July, but Harris has been fully cleared to play on Friday night.

So, can you trust either one in your fantasy football lineup in Week 1? Here's what we know about the Chargers' running back situation.

Chargers RB intel

As we already stated, Harris was removed from the injury report on Thursday and is good to go. Head coach Jim Harbaugh also revealed that Harris is expected to start, although he wouldn't commit to how much Harris would play.

"He says he's ready, and he looks ready to go," Harbaugh said. "Really hard to predict play counts. He's going to play football and have at it. That's the mindset."

Then there is this: Rich Eisen revealed on his show that Harbaugh told him that Hampton is going to start over Harris on Friday night.

On the Chargers' official depth chart, Harris is listed as the starter over Hampton, so take that for what it's worth.

Nice to see Jim is making things easy on us.

While that's obviously a good sign for Hampton's chances of getting enough of a workload to be fantasy-relevant this week, bear in mind that being the starter doesn't mean that player is going to carry a monster workload. It just means Hampton or Harris will be on the field first.

Another thing to factor in here is that Harris missed a ton of time in the offseason and didn't take part in either training camp or the preseason. As a result, it's very possible Harris will get eased in with a smaller workload.

The fact of the matter is, there is no concrete answer here right now. This is a brand new backfield and it's Week 1, so we have nothing to go off of.

If we had to guess, we'd say Hampton is probably the better play after what Eisen shared, but we do not feel comfortable suggesting him as a fantasy football starter in Week 1. The same goes for Harris.

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Mike Moraitis

Mike Moraitis is a freelance writer who covers the NFL for the Sporting News. Over his nearly two decades covering sports, Mike has also worked for Bleacher Report, USA TODAY and FanSided. He hates writing in the third person.