Speaking to John Clark at an event to honor Dick Vermeil on Wednesday evening, Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio revealed some unexpected injury news about Jihaad Campbell.<\/p>\n
You can watch the full NBC Sports Philadelphia interview for yourself<\/a> but here\u2019s the relevant exchange as it relates to Philadelphia\u2019s 2025 first-round pick (hat tip to @DibonaNFL<\/a>):<\/p>\n CLARK: As far as Nakobe Dean and Jaelan Phillips against the run, how ready is Jihaad Campbell for that spot now in Nakobe\u2019s spot?<\/p>\n FANGIO: Well, he\u2019s got to be ready. And we\u2019ve got to do a good job of getting him ready. You know, he is dealing with a shoulder injury. He\u2019s going to miss probably most of the offseason. So, we\u2019re going to have to cram it into him in training camp and hopefully we have enough work to get that done for him.<\/p>\n Yikes.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n With the Eagles unsurprisingly losing Dean in free agency, Campbell is slated to take his place in the starting lineup moving forward. It would be ideal for Campbell, who just turned 22 years old last month, to have a full offseason to help prepare him to be a full-time starter. But apparently that won\u2019t be the case.<\/p>\n Now, it should be noted that Fangio has been wrong about Campbell\u2019s recovery timeline before. Speaking during an early June 2025 press conference, the Eagles\u2019 defensive coordinator said Campbell wouldn\u2019t participate in training camp \u201cuntil sometime in August.\u201d But Campbell basically turned out to be ready from the team\u2019s first practice on July 23.<\/p>\n But that situation doesn\u2019t necessarily mean Fangio is also wrong here. And if we\u2019re parsing his answer, which we are, I wonder if by \u201cmost of the offseason\u201d he means the Eagles\u2019 voluntary spring offseason workout program. It wouldn\u2019t be ideal for Campbell to miss that time. But it would at least be good to see him ready by the time starting camp starts in late July, which might be possible. We\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n The exact nature of Campbell\u2019s shoulder injury currently isn\u2019t clear. He was only listed with a shoulder injury when he had a \u201cshoulder\/back\u201d injury description leading up to Week 18. He was limited for a Wednesday practice before fully practicing on Thursday and Friday that week. With the Eagles resting starters, Campbell played most of the game in the regular season finale. He was not listed on the injury report ahead of the team\u2019s Wild Card game.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Of course, Campbell has a history of shoulder injuries that likely contributed to him falling further than originally expected in the 2025 NFL Draft.<\/p>\n This Campbell news could help to explain why the Eagles were recently checking in on Patrick Queen\u2019s price tag:<\/p>\n Previously, that report made no real sense. And it\u2019s still quite possible it doesn\u2019t happen. But now it\u2019s at least a little understandable where Philly\u2019s interest was coming from.<\/p>\n Assuming the Eagles don\u2019t acquire Queen or another starting-caliber linebacker, Jeremiah Trotter Jr. stands to benefit from the time that Campbell misses this offseason. Trot Jr. saw a lot of first-team off-ball linebacker reps last year before he ultimately lost the job to Campbell. He didn\u2019t play poorly, however. Just the opposite, really; he\u2019s looked good whenever he\u2019s had the chance to shine \u2026 albeit in small sample sizes.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The Eagles will hope that the missed time doesn\u2019t stunt Campbell\u2019s development. Sometimes young players really make a big jump from Year 1 to Year 2 after having the benefit of a full offseason in an NFL team\u2019s workout program. Campbell played a bunch as a rookie but not quite as much as he could\u2019ve since he lost playing time to a superior player in Dean.<\/p>\n Not the end of the world that he could be behind the eight ball entering his sophomore season but it\u2019s not ideal, either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaking to John Clark at an event to honor Dick Vermeil on Wednesday evening, Eagles defensive coordinator Vic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":807958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2068],"tags":[229,25,7,16251,16150,911,393,477,6,13045,7584,242,109,2476,520,64146,5027,425,7960],"class_list":["post-807957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia-eagles","tag-dallas","tag-eagles","tag-football","tag-jaelan-phillips","tag-jeremiah-trotter-jr","tag-jihaad-campbell","tag-las-vegas-raiders","tag-nakobe-dean","tag-nfl","tag-nick-harris","tag-patrick-queen","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-eagles","tag-philadelphiaeagles","tag-pittsburgh","tag-shoulder-injuries","tag-shoulder-injury","tag-the-eagles","tag-vic-fangio"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116215604385315686","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807957","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=807957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/807958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}