Where does he fit in? What will his role be? Will he be able to even get on the field considering the way Jihaad Campbell is playing?

Right now, Nakobe Dean just smiles and shrugs. Who knows? All he knows is that he’s had Oct. 1 circled on his calendar since the spring, and on Oct. 1 – Wednesday afternoon – he was on the football field for the first time in 255 days.

“It’s been on the calendar,” Dean said at his locker after practice Wednesday. “I knew that Wednesday of this week I was going to practice. As soon as I found out that they were going to put me on PUP, I knew that this was the day I would practice.”

It was Jan. 19, during the Eagles’ wild-card win over the Packers at the Linc, that Dean suffered a patellar tendon injury in his left knee.

He had surgery the next day and has been waiting since then to play football again.

“I actually went to bed 30 minutes earlier (than usual) last night,” Dean said. “I wanted to make sure my body feels good.”

The Eagles placed Dean on PUP – Physically unable to Perform – before training camp began and then on regular-season PUP when rosters went down to 53. That meant he had to miss at least the first four games of the season, although he said he’s been cleared to play for a while.

Dean is still on PUP but on Wednesday morning the Eagles opened his practice window. They now have 21 days to either activate him or shut him down for the year.

But he’s obviously going to be activated, either in time for the Broncos game Sunday or more likely the Giants a week from Thursday.

“It felt great to be back out there with the guys,” Dean said. It just felt great to be back running around doing the plays. Just playing football again.”

Dean said he’s not worried where he’ll fit in once he’s activated. At a minimum he’ll play special teams, and he’ll embrace that role. He was a very good special teamer in 2023, when he was still a backup linebacker.

Defensive coordinator Vic Fangio didn’t want to discuss Dean’s potential role in a linebacker room with Zack Baun and Campbell. Not yet.

“We’ll see when we get there,” he said Tuesday. “I don’t think we’re there yet.”

Dean had a terrific 2024 regular season, with three sacks, four pass breakups, two fumble recoveries, nine tackles for loss, six quarterback hits, 128 tackles and a game-saving interception vs. the Jaguars.

He was asked if it would be hard to accept a subordinate role on defense after the way he played last year.

“What do you mean hard for me?” he said. “I mean, I control what I control. I’m out there, I’m playing, I’m practicing.

“I know I can play. I know we can go out there and ball. So I control what I control, continue to ball, continue to get better mentally, physically, emotionally, throughout the whole thing, no matter what. Just continue to get better.”

These 8 ½ months couldn’t have been easy for the 24-year-old Dean, but whether he was out on the field watching practice, in the locker room laughing with his teammates or even in New Orleans before a Super Bowl he couldn’t play in, he was always smiling, always positive.

He said he doesn’t know any other way.

“I mean, being negative ain’t going to get you nowhere,” he said. “I’m a positive person always anyway, no matter what the situation is. I want to breathe positivity. I actually hate negativity in any kind of way.

“Being negative in any type of way, not going to get you nowhere because what’s going to happen is going to happen. So you’ve got to just control what you can control.

“I always call myself an optimistic realist. I’m real with myself for sure, but of course, we’re always optimistic.”

Because of his positivity, his energy, his spirit, Dean is as popular in the locker room as anybody.

So an entire roster – an entire building – has been rooting for him for almost a year as this day approached.

“He’s so happy, and we’re so happy for him,” Zack Baun said. “Good to have him back. But he was never really away, he was just away from football action.

“He was just itching to get out there and get back into action, do anything. I mean, he was the first one up in all the drills. He was taking scout team looks. He was just so happy to be out there.”