Eagles News: Nakobe Dean's return date, waiver claims, latest injury updates

The Philadelphia Eagles had their first official practice on Thursday. It’s not about evaluating, trimming a roster, and development anymore; now it’s all about preparing to further embarrass Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys on Thursday, Sept. 4.

In the past 24 hours, we’ve had a whole bunch of news about who’s on the team, who’s practicing, and who might be coming back. Let’s get into it. 

Nakobe Dean’s return

On Tuesday, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce got engaged. Shortly thereafter, Nakobe Dean absolutely buried that story by announcing that he’ll be back in Week 5. 

Just a reminder, he tore his patellar tendon on Jan. 12, 2025. The Week 5 game against the Broncos is on October 5th. That’s just about nine months. That’s 38 weeks. That’s 266 days. That’s not a whole lot of time.

There's a difference between getting back to the game and getting back to being good. Just because he can come back doesn’t mean that he’s going to jump right out there and blast off like he did last year.

The National Library of Medicine did a whole study on NFL players and tears/ruptures of the tendons attached to the kneecap. 

To dumb it down: there are two tendons, the quadriceps tendon (goes up from the knee and attaches to muscle) and the patellar tendon (goes down and attaches to the big shin bone). Patellar tears are more common than quad tears, and guys have a harder time coming back from the patellar ones. The big takeaway (for Dean’s situation) is that around 55% of the players who tear their patellar tendon get back to the level they were at pre-tear, and if they do, it takes 11 to 12 months. 

So it’s valiant that he’s getting back as quickly as he is, but he’s probably not going to pick up right where he left off. The Eagles are stacked with good linebackers right now, and it might seem like there’s an opportunity to trade one of them, but until they know that Dean is all the way back, I can’t imagine that they do that… and history says that probably won’t happen until January.

That being said, it’s an average of 11-ish months. That means there have been people who have come back in less time... Maybe Nakobe Dean is the 1%; maybe he’s part of the 55% that get back to where they left off, and he does it quicker than anyone else. That’d be sick. 

More Eagles roster moves after cut day

When the Eagles released their initial 53-man roster on Tuesday, a big surprise was that long snapper Charley Hughlett wasn’t on it. Initially, it seemed like they were going to try to get him back on the practice squad to elevate him on game day. Instead, they signed him to the active roster on Wednesday.

They also picked up UDFA guard/center Willie Lampkin, who the Rams waived because of an injury. In order to make room for those two, they waived offensive lineman Trevor Keegan and safety Tristin McCollum. 

That tells you that the Eagles are happy with where they are at safety-wise. Right now, that room is Reed Blankenship, Drew Mukuba (who is dealing with a hamstring thing), Sydney Brown, and Cooper DeJean sometimes.

We know that DeJean is going to be on the field as much as he possibly can. When they’re in nickel, he’s going to be the nickel corner. But when they’re in base? That’s what’s up in the air. In the Spring, he was taking reps at outside corner, and then for most of training camp (up until the last week), he was taking reps at safety.

Now that they’re only carrying three designated safeties and five designated cornerbacks, it feels like: A. DeJean is going to be a safety in base, B. Drew Mukuba’s hamstring injury isn’t that bad, or C. Both. 

How bad are the injuries?

Keep in mind, with all of this stuff, the Eagles don’t have to list an official injury report until Sunday. 

For a good chunk of training camp, A.J. Brown didn’t practice because of a hamstring injury. He’s a player that you don’t really need to see in camp because he’s awesome, and sometimes those awesome guys don’t really do training camp, so that other guys (like Darius Cooper) can get more reps. 

Unfortunately, Nick Sirianni is loyal to the oath of omertà and doesn’t give reporters any kind of information about injuries, so we never knew if Brown was being a good teammate or if he was actually dealing with something real. 

He practiced on Wednesday, so hopefully (fingers crossed) it was just the ‘good teammate’ thing. 

Landon Dickerson had some kind of Meniscus injury during the Eagles’ open practice at The Linc on August 10th, and then had surgery on Aug. 13 (less than three weeks ago). He was practicing on Wednesday as well. That means, again hopefully, the Eagles get to start the season with their Pro-Bowl left guard and not a backup. 

I still think it’d be smart if he sat in Week 1, took the extra 10 days of rest, and came back in Week 2 in Kansas City… But I’m a coward and not a guy who played in the Super Bowl on one knee. Regardless, him practicing is awesome news. 

That leaves the aforementioned rookie safety Drew Mukuba, who did not practice on Wednesday. It’s kind of the exact opposite of the ‘his hammy isn’t that bad, and that’s why McCollum was let go’ thing, but there’s still a week for him to get back and ready to roll. It’s just something to keep an eye on.