New Chargers RB Omarion Hampton on team’s offense: ‘We know they’re going to run the ball, so I’m loving it’

In retrospect, one of the least-surprising picks of the first round of the NFL Draft was former North Carolina running back Omarion Hampton going to the Los Angeles Chargers. Hampton was widely considered the second-best back in the class after Boise State’s Ashton Jeanty, and when he was sitting there for a team run by head coach Jim Harbaugh and offensive coordinator Greg Roman, we should probably have known that they’d take him.

And Hampton, for his part, is very happy with his landing spot.

“We know they’re going to run the ball, so I’m loving it,” Hampton said during an appearance on The Jim Rome Show. “I’m excited, we got me and Najee [Harris], a dominant duo backfield. I’m excited to learn from him, I’m excited to get out there. We got a good offensive line, a good quarterback. I feel like we’re building something special here.”

Harris, of course, was himself a former first-round pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Given his relative lack of effectiveness (he has just a 4.0 yards-per-carry average for his career), it’s probably a stretch to describe him as part of a “dominant” duo, but a rookie is surely never going to say that about a teammate.

Regardless, we know that Hampton is right about the Chargers and the run game. Harbaugh loves to run the ball more than almost any other coach in the league, and so does Roman. They talk about it all the time.

“We know (Harbaugh)’s going to run the ball, he’s decided to run the ball and it’s something he wants to do,” Hampton said. “He did it all his career, so I’m just excited to get started. With him being my head coach, I couldn’t be more happy.”

Last year’s Chargers ran the ball quite often (they had the NFL’s 10th-highest run-to-pass ratio) but they were not very effective when they added. According to Tru Media, they had just a 36.6% rushing success rate, which ranked 24th in the league. That, hopefully, is where the new backfield comes in.