PHILADELPHIA - You have to give the Eagles credit for exhausting all avenues in an attempt to gain every competitive advantage possible in Week 2 against a Tennessee team that is not exactly a Super Bowl contender.
With Landon Dickerson on injured reserve with a bone bruise in his knee, the Eagles have kept the three-time Pro Bowl selection's replacement on Sunday as proprietary information.
The injury itself is not sudden. Dickerson was rolled up on in training camp weeks before the opener, hoped it would settle, then played through it in a 24-22 win over Washington and later called himself "a complete liability."
Imaging confirmed the bruise would not heal if he kept banging it. The team placed him on IR, making him ineligible until at least Week 6.
New offensive coordinator Sean Mannion now has to place a Band-Aid over a hole in a line that already looked uneven in Week 1.
Eagles OL Drew Kendall. | John McMullen/Eagles On SI
Thursday was an exercise in performative tradecraft by Philadelphia station chief Nick Sirianni. Ironically, the CIA-level subterfuge masking whether it will be Drew Kendall , Willie Lampkin , or surprise entrant Fred Johnson is akin to a third-world banana republic kicking the shins of a superpower.
Kendall, a 2025 fifth-round center from Boston College has cross-trained heavily at left guard this summer and remains the most logical replacement. Lampkin, the compact 5-foot-11, 290-pound former waiver claim, wins with leverage and violence in the run game and can play center or guard but worked mainly at RG in training camp.
Johnson, the 6-foot-7, 326-pound veteran tackle with 63 career games under his belt, took the first-team left-guard reps in the brief open portion of Thursday's practice-an alignment that may have been staged for the cameras or a genuine contingency.
Sliding Cam Jurgens to guard and putting Kendall at center also remains on the table in theory, though it would create a musical chairs scenario and quarterback Jalen Hurts mentioned Wednesday he's only been working with Jurgens at center.
The Titans are bottom-five when it comes to overall talent but not on the interior of the defensive line, where All-Pro Jeffery Simmons can make an argument for being the best defensive tackle in the game, and his running mate John Franklin-Myers can make a case for being one of the most underrated interior defenders.
Simmons is the constant. Franklin-Myers arrived this offseason on a three-year, $63 million deal to play next to him after productive years in Denver . Week 1 against the Jets was quiet for both-Tennessee managed almost no pressure and lost 23-10 at home. They will treat Sunday in Nashville as a reset.
Simmons has already said the plan is to "make Jalen Hurts be a QB": stop the off-schedule and force the Eagles to win from the pocket without their best interior mauler on the offensive front.
Robert Saleh's front now has the personnel to shade everything toward the vacancy and dare the backups to hold. In other words, with Dickerson, this was still a difficult assignment against Simmons. Without the powerful blocker, it is slide everything toward Simmons and crossed fingers that Franklin-Myers cannot exploit that attention.
The Eagles are 1-0 and favored by a touchdown on the road. The Titans are 0-1 and looking for their first statement of the Saleh-Cam Ward era.
Philadelphia's secrecy will not change the Titans advanatge in the trenches. It only delays the moment when everyone finds out which combination has to persevere.
This article was originally published on www.si.com/nfl/eagles/onsi as Explaining Eagles Fred Johnson Expos At LG With Nick Sirianni's Shell Game .
