Eagles running back Saquon Barkley did not practice Wednesday.
He left Sunday’s 24-20 loss to the Rams with a hamstring injury after two carries and 8 yards.
The Eagles were also missing wide receiver Hollywood Brown (ankle), linebacker Jihaad Campbell (knee), safety Marcus Epps (groin), outside linebacker Jonathan Greenard (ankle), center Drew Kendall (knee) and wide receiver DeVonta Smith (hamstring).
Linebacker Zack Baun (concussion), tight end Dallas Goedert (knee), offensive tackle Fred Johnson (knee) and cornerback Quinyon Mitchell (knee) were limited.
Goedert has missed two games after spraining his MCL in Week 2, and Baun missed Sunday’s game.
Jaguars Clips
The Jaguars continued their impressive start to the season against the Bengals last Sunday and linebacker Foye Oluokun was integral to their success.
Oluokun had seven tackles, an interception, a forced fumble and a quarterback hit to help the Jags to a 22-17 win. The interception came at Jacksonville’s 10-yard-line early in the fourth quarter and kept the Jaguars up 16-10 heading into the final minutes of the contest.
On Wednesday, the NFL announced that Oluokun has been named the AFC defensive player of the week.
It is the fourth time Oluokun has been awarded conference player of the week honors. The first two came while he was with the Falcons and the last two have come since he moved on to the Jaguars.
The Jaguars are poaching a defensive back from a division rival.
Per Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, Jacksonville has signed cornerback Alijah Huzzie to its 53-man roster off of Houston’s practice squad.
Huzzie, 25, signed with the Texans as an undrafted free agent last year, spending most of the season on the practice squad. He appeared in two games, recording an interception and four total tackles.
Huzzie has not yet appeared in a game this season.
The Jaguars will be in London in Week 5 and Week 6, facing the Eagles and Texans, respectively.
Eagles left guard Cam Jurgens self-reported concussion symptoms on Monday and has entered concussion protocol, Mike Garafolo of NFL Media reports.
Jurgens played all 61 snaps in the loss to the Rams on Sunday.
Willie Lampkin likely will play against the Jaguars in London if Jurgens can’t go. The Friday overseas flight could complicate Jurgens’ chances of clearing protocol in time to play.
Jurgens moved from center to left guard after Landon Dickerson went on injured reserve with a bone bruise in his knee. Dickerson was injured in the season opener. Drew Kendall replaced Jurgens at center.
Jurgens, though, has struggled at guard, prompting a question to coach Nick Sirianni on Monday about whether the Eagles are considering benching Jurgens.
“No, I’m pleased with where Cam is,” Sirianni said, via Dave Zangaro of NBC Sports Philadelphia. “Again, with everybody, obviously we didn’t put out there the product that we want to put out there offensively yesterday, and then also combine that with a loss. There’s going to be plays he wants back, but there’s good moments also.
“I think that’s the consistency of everybody, from our coaches to our players, has to be the thing that continues to rise. That’s Cam; that’s everybody. But Cam is definitely doing good things and like us all, got to be more consistent at times as well.”
The Eagles have a problem at running back.
Starting tailback Saquon Barkley suffered a hamstring injury on his first and only carry of Sunday’s loss to the Rams. He didn’t return.
Via NFL Network, Barkley is “week-to-week.” Which is worse than “day-to-day,” and implies he’ll miss at least one week.
There has been no reporting on the degree of the hamstring strain. Whatever the extent of the damage, it’s an injury that takes time to heal.
Time is of the essence for the Eagles. They play the Jaguars in London on Sunday. And Tank Bigsby is out with core muscle surgery.
That leaves Ryan Shipley as the starter, barring a roster move. Jaydon Blue, Dameon Pierce, and Carson Steele are on the practice squad.
A trade is possible, in theory. Desperation, however, will drive up the price. The Eagles also could scour the other practice squads in search of someone who may want to make the jump to Philly and fill in while Barkley is out.
Eagles running back Saquon Barkley’s status for Week 5’s game against the Jaguars in London is up in the air.
Barkley left Sunday’s 24-20 loss to the Rams with a hamstring injury and head coach Nick Sirianni said the team will have a better idea later this week about whether Barkley is going to miss time.
“Yeah, we’ll see. These guys are going through different things with treatment and all those different things,” Sirianni said, via a transcript from the team. “We’ll see how everything responds and then have more answers for you probably Wednesday on that stuff. I know he’ll do everything he can do to get himself back, and obviously, he’s a great player and a great teammate. We always need him on the field.”
Barkley had two carries for eight yards on Sunday. He also missed most of Week 2 with a stinger and has 36 carries for 182 yards on the season.
Tank Bigsby is set for core muscle surgery after getting hurt against the Rams, so the Eagles are going to be shorthanded at running back even if Barkley is able to go this week. Will Shipley is the only healthy back on the 53-man roster.
The Eagles saw two running backs leave with injuries during Sunday’s 24-20 loss to the Rams and at least one of them is going to be out for a while.
Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports that Tank Bigsby will have core muscle surgery. Bigsby is set to miss around six weeks, so he will likely go on injured reserve while he recovers.
Saquon Barkley suffered a hamstring injury on Sunday and head coach Nick Sirianni said on Monday that his status for the Week 5 game against the Jaguars in London is to be determined. Will Shipley is the only other back on the active roster and the Eagles have Dameon Pierce, Carson Steele, and Jaydon Blue on the practice squad.
Bigsby, who joined the Eagles in a trade with the Jaguars last year, has 28 carries for 91 yards and a touchdown this season.
At the start of the season, there was a lot of talk about team travel for international games as the Rams played the 49ers in Australia.
The two teams employed vastly different strategies, with San Francisco appearing to choose the proper one.
While there is a lot more data about NFL team travel to London, there are still varying approaches to it. With the Eagles playing the Jaguars in London on Sunday, head coach Nick Sirianni detailed his club’s plan for the week in his Monday press conference.
“We felt like leaving Friday was best for our team,” Sirianni said. “This team and with the schedule that we have, with the weeks coming up. So, a lot of research, obviously, went into it. You guys know, when I’ve discussed these things with you about short weeks, long weeks, rain weeks, hot weeks — whatever it may be — international weeks, of how to kind of go about it. This one’s a little different than our last international trip because it was in the first game of the season [in 2024]. And we’re trying to get a full week’s worth of practice in before we go up there.
“But we felt like, though the studies that we did, and through some of the things that we looked all — all the things that we looked at, we decided on this. And at the end of the day, I’ve got to make those decisions, and this is the decision I chose — with the help of great people, no doubt, but at the end of the day, I have to make this decision and this is the one I chose to help this team get ready for this game this week.”
Any concern about jet lag with traveling late in the week?
“Yeah, again, we went through all this,” Sirianni said. “When we get there, I don’t want to get into too many specifics there, but like I said, we feel like this is going to give our team the best chance to win, taking everything into account — jet lag included.”
As Sirianni alluded to, the last time the Eagles played an international game was Week 1 in 2024 when they defeated the Packers in Brazil. The franchise also played the Jags in London back in 2018, winning that game 24-18.
As the stadium in Jacksonville undergoes renovations, the Jaguars will play only six games there in 2026. They could end up playing two more in January.
At 3-1 through four games and with wins over the otherwise 3-0 Browns, the 2-1 Patriots, and 2-1 Bengals, the Jaguars are in position to eventually secure the No. 1 seed in the AFC.
They still have six games in the division, where the Colts, Texans, and Titans are a combined 2-10.
The Jaguars play the next two in London, against the injury-riddled Eagles and the disappointing Texans. Some stiff tests remain (at Baltimore, at Chicago, at Dallas), but most of the remaining games are winnable, especially given the current quality of the team.
For now, the Jaguars have the best odds of any team to win its division (-250). The question is whether, among the four AFC division winners, the Jags finish with the best record.
If they do, there could be a pair of postseason games with only 42,000 fans in attendance. Which won’t be conducive to maximizing ticket revenues (or crowd noise) for the games, but that’s one of the realities of actively renovating a stadium while the team is still playing there.
And it’s still far better for the Jaguars than playing in Buffalo or Kansas City or Baltimore or Cleveland or wherever.
The bottom line is this. In their 32nd season in the NFL, the Jaguars may eventually have the best chance they’ve ever had to get to their first Super Bowl. There’s still a lot of football to be played, but it’s clear that the Jaguars are an elite team. And their playoff games could be played before an intimate crowd, relative to the capacities of other NFL venues.
The Jaguars drafted Travis Hunter to be a two-way player, but this year he’s been mostly a cornerback. And on Sunday he was only a cornerback.
Hunter played every snap on defense in Sunday’s win over the Bengals and did not play on offense at all. Hunter also didn’t play any special teams, and after the game Jaguars coach Liam Coen said after the game that Hunter was too important to the defense on a day when cornerbacks Montaric “Buster” Brown and Christian Braswell were both out with injuries.
“We knew with Buster being down and Braswell being down, he was going to play every single snap of the game,” Coen said of Hunter. “We had some things for him on offense, but we just didn’t feel like putting him out there — if he gets hurt on offense, we’re in a real bad spot. So didn’t want to put ourselves at risk there. I was very proud of the way Travis played defensively today.”
Hunter was one of the best players on the field on defense, with an interception that was negated by a penalty, multiple pass breakups and some hard hits.
“He played his ass off today,” Coen said. “He had the pick that was called back, he had a ton of PBUs, he had the huge tackle, ended up knocking the dude out pretty good. I just thought Trav balled today.”
The Jaguars aren’t saying so, but Hunter currently plays so little offense that the team appears to view him more as a cornerback who can occasionally get on the field for a gadget play on offense than as an actual two-way player. But on a day when Hunter only had one job, the Jaguars were pleased with the way he did it.
