Eagles 2025 53-man roster and the guys who didn't make it

It’s got to absolutely stink to be anyone in any part of the process of cutting someone. Luckily, we’re talentless schlubs and we’ll probably never have to do any of that stuff. For the guys who are getting cut from the Philadelphia Eagles’ roster? Yeesh. A lot of these guys spent their entire spring and summer fighting for a spot on a team that’s set up to be a powerhouse.

Instead, they’re going to go to the Eagles' practice squad, some other team’s practice squad, start for a significantly worse team, or just get straight-up booted from the NFL. It’s a tough life. 

The end of Roster Bubble talk (hopefully)

First off, and most importantly, this is the Eagles’ 53-man roster (for now). There’ll probably be a few changes here and there. But for the most part, these are our guys for 2025.

The two surprises here are Ben VanSumeren and Cameron Williams. There are only a few teams that roster fullbacks who are specifically designated as fullbacks. VanSumeren does add a whole bunch of special teams value, so you have to think that definitely helps.

There was a minute there when some of the smart draft people thought that Cameron Williams was going to be a first-round pick in the 2025 draft. Turns out, that might’ve been a little audacious because the Eagles were able to get him with one of their sixth-round draft picks. 

Williams’ whole thing is that he was super raw because he was only a starter for one year at Texas… but he did have the body and the potential to be a replacement for Lane Johnson whenever he retires. 

I would’ve thought that the Eagles were going to toss him on the IR with some kind of pretend injury so he could stay with the team and keep developing. I was wrong, and he made it. That’s promising, and that’s a really good thing. 

There are guys like running back ShunDerrick Powell and tight end Nick Muse who didn’t make the roster, and no offense to them, but they didn’t really stand a chance. These are some of the notable guys that the Eagles cut or waived on Monday and Tuesday.

Dorian Thompson-Robinson and Kyle McCord

These were the two new quarterbacks that the Eagles brought in this year. DTR was picked by the Browns in the fifth round of the 2023 draft, and he came over to the Eagles in the Kenny Pickett trade back in March. Kyle McCord was one of the Eagles’ sixth-round picks in the 2025 draft.

There was a chance, albeit a small one, that DTR could make it as the QB3. It’s not that he’s never really shown anything in his time with the Browns; it’s that the stuff that he showed with the Browns was bad. 

Reports said that he had a decent start to training camp, but practices where he doesn’t have a real threat of getting his brains bashed in by a 260-pound defensive end are much different from being in an actual game where that can happen. When he has that threat, he struggles big time. That's exactly what happened in the preseason. 

Initially, it seemed like McCord was going to be a shoo-in for the QB3 spot. He was an unknown, and that’s arguably a better situation than what DTR has going on. Unfortunately, McCord didn’t flash, splash, or light it up (pick whichever cliché word you like), and he didn’t earn a roster spot. 

Instead, the Eagles went and traded for Sam Howell. Maybe McCord makes it to the practice squad and develops, but right now, the standard for quarterbacks who have developed from being QB2 or QB3 is Jalen Hurts and Tanner McKee; that’s a high bar to clear.

Charley Hughlett

The Eagles released their long snapper, which is kind of crazy. That means they're going to need to pick one up in the next week. I'd be lying to you if I told you I had any idea of what goes into making a guy a good long snapper, but this is still surprising.

Kenyon Green

On March 12th, the Eagles traded C.J. Gardner-Johnson and a 2025 fifth-round pick to the Texans for Kenyon Green and a 2026 sixth-round pick. Green was the Texans’ first-round pick in the 2022 draft (No. 15, two picks behind Jordan Davis), but he ended up being just really, really bad. I’m guessing that the Eagles brought him in as a reclamation/rehab project for Jeff Stoutland, but that never happened. 

Now, there are a couple of other things that go into that trade: On August 18th, the Eagles traded tight end Harrison Bryant and that same 2026 sixth-round pick back to the Texans for wide receiver John Metchie and a different 2026 sixth-round pick. So, essentially, the Eagles traded C.J.G.J. and a depth tight end for a dud offensive lineman and a usable wide receiver. 

To make it even more interesting (if that’s the right word), on August 7th, C.J.G.J. jacked up his knee in practice while he was covering Metchie. That totally stinks because C.J.G.J. rocks and he’ll always have a place in our hearts for what he did in 2022 and 2024, but it just goes to show that everything is connected and time is a flat circle… or something like that.

Eli Ricks

The Eli Ricks experiment is over, and it’s bittersweet. On one hand, no one can ever say, ‘What if we trade Eli Ricks for ____?’ ever again. On the other hand, the cornerback room is in a very stable spot if it means he’s gone. 

The Eagles signed him as a UDFA in 2023, and in his first-ever preseason game, he had a really slick 31-yard pick-six off of Anthony Brown. It was pretty cool, and it looked like the Eagles might’ve had something with him. 

Then, when he played in actual games, it was either ‘he doesn’t look too bad,’ or ‘this guy might’ve never played football before.’ It ended up being more of the latter, and that’s too bad. 

But where a tree falls, another one grows. Based on everything we’ve seen over the past two years and this preseason, it might be ‘What if we trade Kelee Ringo for ____ player?’ 

Darian Kinnard

Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Chris Jones, Joe Thuney, Harrison Butker, Nick Allegretti, and James Winchester: the seven active players in the NFL that Statmuse says have won three Super Bowls. The glaring and downright disrespectful omission is Darian Kinnard. 

He was with the Chiefs in 2022 and 2023, and then the Eagles signed him in free agency before the 2024 season. The guy knows how to win, or at least gives off a winning aura to his teammates. 

On Sunday evening, the Eagles traded him to the Packers for a 2027 seventh-round draft pick. When there’s a team that trades a player for a very late round pick that is close to roster cut downs, it more than likely means that player was going to be cut anyway, and the team that gets him didn’t want to have to take their chances with waivers.

Regardless, I don’t like that the Eagles traded an enchanted man like Kinnard to the team that tried to kill the Tush Push. It makes sense team-building-wise, but I don’t like it. 

Ainias Smith

On offense, Ainias Smith was really just a slot receiver, and that doesn’t mean a whole lot when the other receivers on the team are A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, and Jahan Dotson. That means he was going to have to be nails on special teams (specifically with punt returns) this summer.

He looked fine with those returns during the preseason games, but he definitely wasn’t awesome at it. I imagine that the Eagles are expecting Smith to be able to make it back to them so he can be a practice squad guy, and then elevate him a handful of times to be the returner before he has to get signed to the 53 (just like what they did with Britain Covey in 2022 and 2023).

Avery Williams also didn’t make the 53, so if Smith or Williams doesn’t get signed to the practice squad, it looks like it’ll be Cooper DeJean returning punts. He’s really good at it, but it’d be pretty sick if he didn’t have to take extra shots if he doesn’t have to.

So that’s it. Hopefully this is the end of ‘Roster Bubble guy’ talk for the next nine months, because if we have to talk about them again during the season, it probably means things are going horribly, horribly wrong.

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