Eagles receiver DeVonta Smith missed his second straight practice Friday afternoon because of a knee injury he suffered Monday night against the Seahawks.
The 25-year-old Smith has yet to miss a game in his three-year NFL career, playing in 48 of 48 regular-season games and 4 of 4 postseason games.
If Smith is unable to play on Christmas Day, the Eagles' receivers for that game would be AJ Brown, Quez Watkins, Julio Jones, Olamide Zaccheaus and Britain Covey. However, Smith is an incredibly durable player, so we'll see on Saturday if he can return to training in some form.
This season, Smith has 74 catches for 957 yards and 6 touchdowns.
Smith was one of five Eagles who missed practice Friday for the second straight day. The others were CB Darius Slay (knee), LG Landon Dickerson (thumb), LB Zach Cunningham (knee) and LB Nicholas Morrow (abdomen).
Both Cam Jurgens (pec) and Avonte Maddox (pec) returned to practice after being listed as full participants on Thursday.
We already know that the Eagles will be without Slay and Dickerson in this game. Both players are expected to return in the next few weeks but are surviving surgeries. Slay had arthroscopic knee surgery last Tuesday and Dickerson had thumb surgery on Wednesday. None of the players were placed on IR for a specific reason.
At linebacker, things are a little tricky without the Eagles' top three linebackers. Nakobe Dean is already out for the season and now Cunningham and Morrow may not be available for this game. Cunningham missed last week due to injury and Morrow joined him on the injury report.
That means the Eagles only have Shaq Leonard and Ben VanSumeren left as off-ball linebackers on the 53-man roster. The other two linebackers in that group Friday were practice linebacker Brandon Smith and Patrick Johnson, who is normally an outside linebacker but can also play off the ball. Johnson got his first defensive snaps of the 2023 season on Monday night in Seattle.
On the left side, the Eagles had veteran Sua Opeta taking reps at the start of practice. Opeta filled in for Cam Jürgens last week. It looks like he's moving to the other side of the middle in this case.
The Eagles practiced outside on Friday despite freezing temperatures. The only non-lineman to wear shorts was rookie safety Sydney Brown.
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