November 01, 2020
Kate Frese/for PhillyVoice
Lane Johnson is excited for another Eagles chat with Jimmy Kempski
The Philadelphia Eagles, for the first time in a long time, are facing a team that has arguably worse cumulative injuries than themselves in the Dallas Cowboys, who have not handled their injury adversity well, to say the least.
Here are the Eagles' and Cowboys' inactives, with analysis.
• RT Lane Johnson: Johnson's ankle just won't seem to cooperate with him. It's almost certainly going to affect him for the rest of the season. The bigger question is how much longer after that it will continue to give him problems. In his absence, Jordan Mailata is likely to fill in at RT.
• RB Miles Sanders: Sanders will likely be back against the Giants in two weeks. The Eagles will have to rely on Boston Scott and Corey Clement to take advantage of Dallas' awful run defense.
• WR Alshon Jeffery: A week ago, the Eagles told Mike Garafolo that Alshon Jeffery was expected to be good to go against the Cowboys.
#Eagles have ruled out WR Alshon Jeffery and added a calf injury to his previous foot injury. I’m told it’s a minor strain but that’s the reason he’s out vs. the #Giants. They expect him to ramp up next week and play against the #Cowboys.
— Mike Garafolo (@MikeGarafolo) October 21, 2020
He's still out. 🙄
• OT Jack Driscoll: The Eagles could use Driscoll, who has filled in at times this season for Lane Johnson, but he too has been injured twice already.
• CB Cre'Von LeBlanc: In terms of handling CeeDee Lamb out of the slot, I liked the 5'10 LeBlanc over the 5'7 Nickell Robey-Coleman in that matchup, but LeBlanc will not be available.
• CB Craig James: James is probably the Eagles' best special teams player, but he has been on and off the injury report all season.
• QB Nate Sudfeld: Poor Suds.
• DT Malik Jackson (quad): Jackson's strong season has maybe been overstated a bit. He has 13 tackles and 1.5 sacks, but has certainly been much more disruptive than Javon Hargrave.
• TE Dallas Goedert, WR Jalen Reagor, OT Jason Peters, LB T.J. Edwards, and S Rudy Ford were all activated off of IR on Saturday.
• TE Zach Ertz: Ertz hasn't had the best 2020 season. He watched as Travis Kelce signed an extremely team-friendly contract, thus hurting his negotiating power, followed by publicly voicing his frustration with the lack of a new deal, followed by a lack of productivity on the field, followed by a high ankle sprain that will keep him out 4-6 weeks.
• WR DeSean Jackson: There probably weren't realistic expectations that Jackson was going to stay healthy after he returned to action last week against the Giants.
• LG Isaac Seumalo: Seumalo is out "for the foreseeable future," per Doug Pederson, in September.
• LB Nate Gerry: Gerry is obviously not a fan favorite these days, but he is a starter who never comes off the field, so the Eagles will have to figure out how they reassign his role, even it's hard to imagine they'll be worse off with someone else in there instead.
• DT Hassan Ridgeway: Ridgeway went on IR with a biceps injury. Because the Eagles were (previously) fortunate not to see any of their top three DTs miss any substantial time through the first six games, Ridgeway didn't get a a ton of snaps, but he was productive when he was on the field. Ridgeway had 11 tackles (2 for loss) and a sack on 137 snaps this year. His season is over.
• DE Genary Avery: Avery had one productive game, went back to barely playing to make room for Vinny Curry, and is now out for at least three games with an elbow injury.
• LT Andre Dillard: Dillard struggled mightily as a rookie, and he came into camp as a clear player of interest, as he was poised to start at LT this season. He was up and down in camp, with the "down" moments being very alarming. Dillard injured his biceps, and is done for the season.
• TE Josh Perkins: He was better than Richard Rodgers?
• RG Brandon Brooks (PUP): Brooks is in the conversation for 'best RG in the NFL," so obviously, losing him for the entire season has hurt.
• WR Marquise Goodwin: Goodwin was a veteran wide receiver with speed that the Eagles took a flier on, as something of an possible in-game replacement for DeSean Jackson.
• QB Andy Dalton: Seventh-round rookie quarterback Ben DiNucci gets the start.
We'll update with the rest of the Cowboys' inactives when they are made available.
• iOL Joe Looney and LB Sean Lee were both activated off of IR on Saturday.
• QB Dak Prescott: We could probably write 3000 words on the short-term and long-term impacts of Prescott's ugly ankle injury, but the short-short version is this:
• LT Tyron Smith: Smith has four All-Pro nods (two first-team, two second-team), and seven Pro Bowl appearances to his credit, and is widely regarded as one of the best offensive tackles in the NFL. He played in two games this season, but surgery on his neck ended his season.
• RT La'el Collins: Collins started the season on short-term IR with a hip injury, but when his hip didn't progress as the Cowboys had hoped, Collins had surgery, ending his season. He was replaced in the starting lineup by undrafted rookie free agent Terence Steele.
• CB Chidobe Awuzie: Awuzie is probably the Cowboys' No. 1 CB, after Byron Jones walked in free agency. He missed five games with a hamstring injury, was thought of as likely to play against the Eagles, but could not get healthy in time.
• TE Blake Jarwin: In 2019, Jarwin was held back from flourishing when the Cowboys decided to bring Jason Witten back out of retirement. In 2020, Jarwin was going to have his first chance to be the regular starter at TE, but he tore an ACL Week 1 against the Rams. Jarwin is a good player, and his loss has been overlooked a bit, in my view.
• OT Brandon Knight: Knight started four games at LT in relief of Smith, but he had arthroscopic surgery on his knee, and will be out a while, but should return at some point this season. With Smith and Knight both out, the next guy up was Cameron Erving last week against the Football Team, though it's possible that the Cowboys could move RG Zack Martin to LT as well. The bet here is that it will be Erving.
• DT Trysten Hill: Hill is probably best known for this dirty alligator roll against the Seahawks earlier this season.
Hill was a second round pick of the Cowboys in 2019 who has 16 career tackles.
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