EL SEGUNDO, Calif. (AP) — Derwin James has accomplished plenty with the Los Angeles Chargers, including agreeing to a new three-year contract extension on Tuesday that makes him the NFL’s highest-paid safety once again.
Success in the playoffs, however, has been elusive during James’ first seven seasons. He hopes to address the one gap in his otherwise stellar resume during the new deal, which now runs through 2029.
“Honestly, I want to win, win the Super Bowl so bad, man, so coming out here and just working, working, working hard as I can every day, and I feel like that’s what I’m so focused on. The money’s good, yeah, it’s good, but I can’t get my thoughts off being the last team playing,” James said Wednesday after the first day of organized team activities.
James has never reached the AFC championship game, let alone the Super Bowl, in four playoff appearances since the Chargers drafted him in the first round in 2018.
His only postseason win came at the end of James’ rookie season when Los Angeles defeated the Baltimore Ravens in a wild-card game before losing to the eventual Super Bowl champion New England Patriots in the divisional round.
To help get over that hump, the Chargers chose to keep James for the long term because of his positional versatility and value as a leader.
In the past two seasons under head coach Jim Harbaugh and former defensive coordinator Jesse Minter, who became head coach of the Ravens in January, James had 187 tackles, 16 tackles for loss, 7 1/2 sacks, four interceptions, one forced fumble and one fumble recovery. He was second team All-Pro in both seasons.
James’ multifaceted deployment is not expected to change under new coordinator Chris O’Leary, who was the Chargers safeties coach in 2024 before spending last season in the college ranks at Western Michigan.
“I think he’s going to let me know, like, whatever you need from me, and that role can change weekly. I feel like I’m a very versatile player, whatever you need from whether it’s to guard the tight end, guard the running back, blitz this week, play in the post, play deep. Whatever the game plan, like, requires, I feel like I can help the team, so whatever he needs from me, honestly,” James said.
Just as important as his ability to play multiple spots is James’ enthusiasm on and off the field. Edge rusher Khalil Mack called James “one of the greatest teammates I’ve ever played with, just from the standpoint of the man.
“How he treats people, how he wants to be treated, and how he carries himself, he carries himself like that every day,” Mack said.
“The energy is there, it’s positive, it’s infectious throughout the building. So, yeah, you want to keep a guy like Derwin in any building. I’m sure any team around the NFL would want to keep him for a lifetime.”
Justin Herbert took part in on-field workouts for the first time this spring after the Chargers quarterback skipped earlier segments of the voluntary offseason program to spend time with pop singer Madison Beer while she is on tour in Europe. Herbert and Beer took their relationship public in October, and he recently appeared in her new music video.
Harbaugh said he was happy to see Herbert take some personal time by returning support for Beer after she became a regular presence at Chargers home games this past season.
“He told me he wasn’t going to be here for those two weeks, and my first reaction was, ’You need a ride to the airport?'” Harbaugh joked. “He’s just been somebody that he’s just here all the time. I mean, sometimes I wanted to shoo him out of the building.”
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Los Angeles Chargers safety Derwin James Jr. speaks during a news conference after the NFL football team's practice Wednesday, May 27, 2026, in El Segundo, Calif. (AP Photo/William Liang)
Los Angeles Chargers safety Derwin James Jr. gestures during a news conference after the NFL football team's practice Wednesday, May 27, 2026, in El Segundo, Calif. (AP Photo/William Liang)
Los Angeles Chargers safety Derwin James Jr. speaks during a news conference after the NFL football team's practice Wednesday, May 27, 2026, in El Segundo, Calif. (AP Photo/William Liang)
CAIRO (AP) — Iranians began to regain internet access on Wednesday after authorities ended a monthslong shutdown. But users said service was slow and spotty in some areas, with apps like YouTube and Instagram heavily restricted, as they were before the cutoff began during nationwide protests in January.
Authorities justified the outage as a military imperative after the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. Their decision to lift some restrictions this week came as negotiators appeared to be closing in on a more permanent truce. But many Iranians feared access could be cut off again at a moment's notice.
Internet tracking company Netblocks said Iran’s connectivity, which measures the ability of devices to connect to the internet, is at around 86% of capacity from before the cutoff. Internet analysis firm Kentik said internet traffic, which measures the amount of data transferred and is a good illustration of usage, was at around 40%.
Amir Rashidi, an Iranian cybersecurity analyst, said there were still widespread disruptions. “It's too early to say the shutdown is over,” he wrote on X.
Iran’s roughly 90 million people have been cut off from the internet for most of 2026, one of the world’s longest and strictest national shutdowns. Young people with online careers saw their incomes evaporate. Job losses and the closure of online businesses added to the war's steep economic costs.
The cutoff made it difficult for Iranian families to communicate through months of unrest and war. At some points, phone lines were also cut off, though they were later restored.
A woman living in Tehran said that for months she was barely able to speak to her sons living abroad. She couldn't believe authorities had restored access, saying she had assumed they would find some justification to prolong the outage.
A taxi driver said service was restored but weak. He expressed hope it would improve so he could use messaging apps with family and friends. Both spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
Prices spiked during the shutdown, with residents in Tehran at times paying around $7.50 per gigabyte. Prices are back down to around $2.25 for 30 gigabytes, roughly where they were before the protests.
Even then, Iran tightly controlled access to popular social media sites, leading many to rely on virtual private networks, or VPNs. The cost of those workarounds soared during the shutdown, making them unaffordable for many as the economy was battered.
Businesses have started reappearing online, announcing their return with posts on sites like Instagram and Telegram.
A gamer and tech influencer in the central city of Isfahan said the shutdown had caused him to lose a lot of his audience on YouTube and Instagram, where he had spent years building up a large following.
“All my views and interactions are way down. I’ve been erased from the algorithm,” he said in a voice note sent by WhatsApp, adding that his internet connection was still slower than before the shutdown.
“The situation is such that many content producers have had their income reduced to zero, have moved on to other jobs, or have been forced to sell their equipment to survive,” he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
Iranian authorities first shut down the internet in January during mass anti-government protests that were eventually stamped out in a violent crackdown. Thousands of people were killed and tens of thousands detained.
That cutoff was just starting to ease when the government imposed a complete internet blackout after the start of the war, when U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iran's supreme leader and other top officials.
The government faced criticism for the prolonged shutdown, which caused even more harm to an economy devastated by inflation, strikes on key industries and a U.S. blockade on Iranian ports.
The internet cutoff cost an estimated $30-40 million daily, with indirect losses likely twice that much, a member of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, Afshin Kolahi, told a local newspaper last month. About 10 million people have jobs that depend on internet connectivity, according to Communications Minister Sattar Hashemi.
Iranians still had access to a national net, but that has a far narrower reach, and users complained of poor service and heavy censorship. Senior government officials are given SIM cards granting them access to the global internet. Under pressure, the government expanded access to the SIM cards to some professions during the shutdown.
A woman checks her smartphone while sitting on a bench along a sidewalk in northern Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, May 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
