There's been a distinct edge to Nakobe Dean this past week at Eagles camp.
In Saturday's practice, Jalen Hurts checked down to rookie running back Will Shipley on a 7-on-7 rep and Dean shouldered him straight to the ground as soon as the ball got there.
Then during Sunday's session, as our own Jimmy Kempski observed, the third-year linebacker made another straight-up tackle on Shipley, an additional stop of the running back for no gain, a pass breakup on a throw meant for DeVonta Smith, and a touch-up "sack" of Hurts.
Whenever he's out on the field at the NovaCare Complex of late, Dean has been fast, physical, and above all, noticeable.
"The guy flies around," teammate and competing linebacker Devin White said. "He's very physical on contact. He always wants to be the thumper – the hammer and not the nail."
But he seems to move in on plays now with more purpose and decisiveness than he has through his first two years in the NFL, especially after a rough 2023 campaign when the Eagles, who quickly proved to be woefully thin at linebacker, entrusted him with the green dot on his helmet to relay play calls until he quickly lost that, and his entire season, with a Lisfranc foot injury that kept him sidelined.
That was all months ago. He's healthy now, but Dean didn't say he was back. He said he was better.
"The injury that I had was hard," Dean said after practice on Saturday of his recovery. "It was long. It was – I didn't have a day off. I didn't have an offseason. It was at least five days a week all the way up until training camp started, as far as getting this foot right and getting it better, and it's like: I'm not back, I'm better."
And it's all been showing in the reps as training camp, and now the preseason, push deeper into August, which might complicate the Eagles' decisions for who ultimately starts at linebacker, but maybe in the best possible way.
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After the 2023 season crashed and burned, the Eagles approached free agency in the spring knowing they needed to look for linebacking help, which led them to bring in White and Zack Baun on one-year deals.
Those two – since White was a former Super Bowl champion and Pro Bowler with the Buccaneers and Baun was a somewhat established linebacker with the Saints – came into camp as the projected starters while Dean was left on the outside looking in after all that time away.
The picture, however, started shifting once camp progressed to the pads going on, drills getting more physical, and the defense having more leeway to get more aggressive. The Eagles weren't full-on tackling, but Dean could induce more contact and move around more freely, which gave way to moving around more confidently.
It all seemed to click with last week's preseason game against the Patriots, when he made a team-leading five tackles, was all over the field, and left what stood as a 14-13 Eagles win as the highest-graded player on the field (90.0), per Pro Football Focus.
That carried into the next week's worth of practices, to the point where Dean, who was originally thought of as a steal of a third-round pick out of Georgia two years ago, is suddenly back in the starting linebacker conversation.
And if he can keep that effort going into the final preseason game this Saturday against the Vikings and this last run of training camp practices, he might end up actually winning a starting job back.
"I really like that about him," White said of Dean's play. "Just a relentless mindset of just wanting to go out there and kill."
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