During the first three years of Nick Sirianni’s tenure as head coach in Philadelphia, the Eagles didn’t play their rookies very much on offense or defense.
That changed in 2024.
During the Super Bowl season, the top three picks (Quinyon Mitchell, Cooper DeJean and Jalyx Hunt) ended up playing major roles in the championship run. Mitchell was a starter all season, DeJean worked his way into the starting lineup and Hunt worked his way into the edge rusher rotation.
As we look ahead to this upcoming season, let’s try to find roles for the Eagles’ 10-man draft class in 2025:
Round 1-31: Jihaad Campbell, LB, Alabama
The Eagles might have gotten the steal of the draft by moving up just one spot to take a consensus top-15 player at No. 31 overall. But there are many factors that make it really tough to figure out just how much Campbell is going to play during his rookie season and it starts with the reason he slipped to the bottom of the first round. There were some injury concerns.
Campbell, 21, had shoulder surgery in March to repair a torn labrum. That came after the Combine and before the Alabama pro day. The week before the draft, Campbell actually retweeted a report that he would be ready for his rookie training camp but he and the Eagles have been noncommittal about his timeline since the draft. It seems possible that Campbell could miss the spring and perhaps even some of training camp. So we’ll have to see if he’s healthy.
The other reason it’s really hard to project Campbell’s playing time is we don’t know which position he’s going to major in first. Campbell played mostly off-ball linebacker late in his career at Alabama but was recruited out of high school as an edge rusher. And after Howie Roseman drafted Campbell, he immediately talked up Campbell’s ability to add value as a rusher off the edge. While the Eagles didn’t want to get too deep into their plans to use Campbell, the good news is that veteran…
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