{"id":207881,"date":"2025-07-15T02:33:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-15T02:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/207881\/"},"modified":"2025-07-15T02:33:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T02:33:11","slug":"olb-jalyx-hunt-expected-to-start-for-eagles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/207881\/","title":{"rendered":"OLB Jalyx Hunt Expected To Start For Eagles"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Eagles are moving into a new era of edge rushers after the retirement of Brandon Graham<\/a> and the departure of Josh Sweat<\/a> in free agency.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Since 2018, Graham and Sweat has accounted for 209 appearances, 116 starts, and 7,050 snaps in Philadelphia, though Graham largely played a rotational role in the last three years. Still, the Eagles will have to replace both players\u2019 snaps to maintain a pass rush that helped power their championship run.<\/p>\n

Leading the edge room will be 2023 first-rounder Nolan Smith<\/a>. He emerged as a starter partway through the 2024 season and Graham\u2019s triceps injury in Week 12 only increased his role. Smith finished the regular season with 6.5 sacks and added 4.0 more in the playoffs while playing 76.8% of the Eagles\u2019 defensive snaps.<\/p>\n

The primary candidate to start opposite Smith is 2023 third-round pick Jalyx Hunt<\/a>, per Dave Zangaro of NBC Sports Philadelphia<\/a>. Hunt started his rookie year as a healthy scratch and finished it as a playoff hero with 1.5 sacks in the postseason. This offseason, he added weight and impressed Eagles All-Pro right tackle\u00a0Lane Johnson<\/a> in spring practices. Graham also said on the<\/a> Ross Tucker Podcast that Hunt had put on some \u201cgood weight,\u201d adding that \u201cthe sky\u2019s the limit for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a pair of 24-year-olds set to start this year, the Eagles added veteran edge depth this offseason by signing\u00a0Azeez Ojulari<\/a> and\u00a0Josh Uche<\/a> to one-year deals. Both flashed as impact players earlier in their career \u2013 Ojulari with 8.0 sacks as a rookie in 2021 and Uche with 11.5 sacks in 2022 \u2013 but consistency has been lacking since. Ojulari missed 22 games in the last three years due to injury, while Uche only logged 5.0 sacks in the last two seasons, but both will have a rotational role right away with the potential to eat into Hunt\u2019s snap share if he falters.<\/p>\n

On the interior, the Eagles will be looking to Jordan Davis<\/a> and Moro Ojomo<\/a> to replace Milton Williams<\/a> alongside Jalen Carter<\/a> on pass-rushing downs. Ojomo is leading the battle coming out of the spring, per Geoff Mosher of PhillyVoice<\/a>, but Carter\u2019s untapped physical potential will keep him in the running. Fourth-round rookie\u00a0Ty Robinson was an impressive pass-rusher at Nebraska, but he will have to prove himself against his new teammates this summer before he gets a crack at the rest of the league.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Eagles are moving into a new era of edge rushers after the retirement of Brandon Graham and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207882,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2068],"tags":[10035,25,7,10167,479,7522,14454,9715,6,12510,242,109,2476,1988],"class_list":{"0":"post-207881","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-eagles","8":"tag-azeez-ojulari","9":"tag-eagles","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-jalyx-hunt","12":"tag-jordan-davis","13":"tag-josh-sweat","14":"tag-josh-uche","15":"tag-moro-ojomo","16":"tag-nfl","17":"tag-nolan-smith","18":"tag-philadelphia","19":"tag-philadelphia-eagles","20":"tag-philadelphiaeagles","21":"tag-ty-robinson"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114854914052483326","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}