Jalen Carter

It's Andrew DiCecco, Eagles beat reporter for insidethebirds.com. And it's Wednesday, which means you get your first injury report of the week.

Not practicing for the Eagles Wednesday, defensive tackle Jalen Carter, wrist.

Defensive back Cooper DeJean, calf abdomen.

Limited for the Eagles, outside linebacker Jonathan Grenard with a pectoral.

We'll learn more, obviously, as the season goes.

But the good news here is that Cooper DeJean says he expects to play Sunday against the Titans.

Jalen Carter, with the wrist injury, that popped up Wednesday.

That's not a good thing, but that's obviously something that we'll monitor throughout the week.

Okay.

Let's get Desmond Ritter in there and see what you have, because that was going into the next year where you had, I believe that was the Bryce Young, CJ Stroud, Anthony Richardson draft, Jalen Carter.

I think they, that was a draft where they selected Bijan at eight and, And I'm like, okay, if you give Desmond Ritter that runway, like you said, to deal with the good, the bad, and the ugly, the peaks and valleys of almost a full season of games, right, now you know what you have.

And you look at the good and say, okay, if he's in the good bucket, 12 out of the 17 games, do we win those 12 games? If he's in the mid to bad, like, can we overcome that? Or if he's ugly, then we just know what the ugly looks like.

So when practice begins, there's two key players we will be looking for as the injury report.

Well, it has two very key Eagles on there that did not practice on Wednesday as Jalen Carter mispracticed with a wrist injury and Cooper Dejean mispracticed with a calf-abdomen injury.

So I feel like you'll all laugh at how I pronounced that initially.

But let's talk about Cooper Dejean first because he had obviously a bad game on Sunday.

But then they're thin at safety.

So we'll see what happens with Cooper later today.

And then Jalen Carter with the wrist injury.

Brian Baldinger was on WIP on Wednesday and was pretty critical of Jalen Carter.

Like Jordan Davis was a problem in this game in both phases.

Jalen Carter was great.

I thought Nolan Smith was great.

I thought their blitzes were good.

We've got one of the best defensive tackles in football.

Do you see Jalen Carter jerseys all over the place? I do not.

I see them.

Jalex Hunt himself said he's never even seen somebody wear one of his jerseys.

Here's another example.

We got Zach Bond again, all pro.

And, you know, Jalen Carter, one of the best defensive tackles.

And then we look at our top 11 list.

We've got one of the best defensive tackles in football.

Do you see Jalen Carter jerseys all over the place? I do not.

I see them.

Jalex Hunt himself said he's never even seen somebody wear one of his jerseys.

Here's another example.

We got Zach Bond again, all pro.

And, you know, Jalen Carter, one of the best defensive tackles.

And then we look at our top 11 list.

Absolutely unreal, right? I think the thing that jumps out at me is Jennings has been so productive throwing the ball.

We really haven't seen any much from Kendrick Raphael, the running back.

Remember the transfer that they got from Cal.

I expect to see SMU to get the running game going in the coming weeks.

Look, 59 rush attempts in two games, 374 rushing yards.

I think the thing that's even more impressive is that I think he leads the team in receptions and has a couple of receiving touchdowns, so he is the Duke offense.

Like, whatever receiver assets we thought Duke was going to have at the beginning of the year, this is strictly about Nate Shepard, maybe Hasley the tight end, but he is numero uno right now in college fantasy football, the best college fantasy football asset, I would argue, particularly at running back in the country right now after a couple of weeks.

Virginia Tech, interesting matchup.

I mean, this is, this is, you know what I think, um, Howie's done a really good job at being kind of one step ahead.

Like on the defensive line, for example, he drafted Jordan Davis, not early, but he was positioned with Davis and Carter for the retirement of Fletcher Cox.

Yes.

He drafted Cam Juergens.

Yeah, both lines, offensive and defensive line.

How we got reinforcements on the D line.

He drafted Milton Williams, Mauro Ojoma, Jordan Davis, Jalen Carter, obviously.

He's loaded up on that defensive line.

He came to fucking Rainey's Barbecue with a...

What was it? I have a Jalen Carter jersey that I got from China.

I got one of the Chinese jerseys.

Little ass numbers on it.