Darren Sproles has been piling up yardage since he first picked up a football in a Pop Warner game at the age of nine. That\u2019s when he sprinted 80 yards for a touchdown. The San Diego Chargers running back\/kick returner hasn\u2019t let up since. While at Kansas State, Sproles set 23 school records and had the sixth-most all-purpose yards in NCAA history. This season, in Week 6 against Denver, he set the Chargers\u2019 all-time record for combined yards on kickoff and punt returns with 5,262. That\u2019s the game in which Sproles returned a punt 77 yards for a touchdown. Sproles, drafted in the fourth round by the Chargers in 2005, is a speedy, shifty runner who is dangerous out of the backfield or as a receiver. At 5-feet, 6-inches and185 pounds, Sproles also is one of the NFL\u2019s smallest players. But that doesn\u2019t stop him from making big plays. In the season opener at Oakland, Sproles returned a kickoff 59 yards to set up a field goal and his 5-yard run with 18 seconds left gave the Chargers a 24-20 win. Against Baltimore the following week, Sproles caught seven passes for a career-high 124 yards, including an 81-yard TD reception. He had a 58-yard scoring catch in a 37-7 victory at Kansas City in Week 7, and his 21-yard catch in Week 9 at New York set up the game-winning touchdown in a 21-20 decision over the Giants. And there is something about playing the Indianapolis Colts that gets Sproles going. In a 2007 game against the Colts, Sproles became the ninth player to return a punt and kickoff for touchdowns in the same game, his first two NFL TDs. In last season\u2019s playoff game at Indianapolis, Sproles\u2019 22-yard scoring run in overtime gave the Chargers a 23-21 win. He had 328 all-purpose yards in the contest, the third-most in postseason history. Sproles has been LaDainian Tomlinson\u2019s backup since Michael Turner left for Atlanta after the 2007 season. And with Tomlinson\u2019s production slipping over the past couple of years, it might be time for Sproles to start. That\u2019s probably what the Chargers were thinking when they kept Sproles from testing the free-agent waters by tagging him as their franchise player after last season.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Darren Sproles has been piling up yardage since he first picked up a football in a Pop Warner game at the age of nine. That\u2019s when he sprinted 80 yards for a touchdown. The San Diego Chargers running back\/kick returner hasn\u2019t let up since. While at Kansas State, Sproles set 23 school records and had […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":256763,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"Sproles has cemented his role as a key Charger","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559,11553,11550],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-272392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beach-bay-press","category-sports","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}