The Eagles are placing starting left guard Landon Dickerson on Injured Reserve with a knee injury.
On 94WIP, Landon Dickerson confirmed that was the plan put together by the team to deal with his knee injury, although he hadn’t yet gotten official word. The news was first reported by Jeff McLane of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Dickerson got “rolled up on” during a training camp practice but tried to play through a bone bruise in his right knee in Week 1 against the Commanders.
“Honestly, address the elephant in the room, I played like s— yesterday,” Dickerson said. “I was a complete liability yesterday. Again, that was my fault. I know I said earlier in camp, I shouldn’t be out there until I feel healthy. A few weeks ago, got rolled up on in practice. I thought as weeks went by it would get better. It didn’t and we kind of went out there and finally got some imaging on it today, figured out what was wrong with it.
“Really the best plan going forward is to put me on IR so I can get this thing better to have a good stretch at the back end of the season vs. kind of what happened last year, go out there limping through 18 weeks. I don’t think anyone wants to see that again because that was just ugly. I don’t want to do that again because that was just some BS.”
This means that Dickerson will miss at least the next four games as he tries to get healthy and return for the rest of the 2026 season. Dickerson said he is confident he’ll be fine after missing the next four weeks. Dickerson also said this injury is not related to any injuries from last season and he had “been feeling great” in training camp until then.
It seems likely that Drew Kendall will get the start in Week 2 against the Titans and All-Pro DT Jeffery Simmons.
Dickerson had a really rough season opener against the Commanders on Sunday at the Linc. He gave up four pressures and also struggled in the run game.
Dickerson is still just 27 years old and the starting left guard is just one season removed from back-to-back-to-back Pro Bowls. But if you had high hopes that Dickerson would return to that form in 2026, the early returns were not good.
A few hours before the IR news broke, head coach Nick Sirianni was asked this question: Is Dickerson still physically capable of playing at the high level the team needs?
“I think what you see with Landon is his extreme power,” Sirianni said. “He’s a big man who is able to move guys off the spot. If you go back and you look at … OK, so he gives up some pressures. All right, but he also caved in that side on Saquon’s long run on that third down. And just did a really good job of pushing their defensive tackle and displacing him, which is a big job description for him.
“He’s tough as heck. We’ve won a ton of games with Landon and there’s a lot of good things that he can do. Just like every player on our team from yesterday’s game, and every coach for that matter, there’s good moments and there are moments that we got to fix. That’s where we are. And can’t tell you how much I think of Landon and the player that he is and particularly that power and that size where he can move guys off their off the spot against their will.”
To Sirianni’s point, Dickerson did have a great block on Washington DT Shy Tuttle that helped spring Barkley on a 42-yard scamper in the second quarter on an inside zone run.
But for that positive example, we have plenty of other plays from Sunday where Dickerson looked like he wasn’t up to the task in pass protection or in the run game. He clearly wasn’t healthy.
And with the Eagles moving to a wide-zone running scheme, there were obvious questions about how Dickerson’s size and now-limited mobility fit. In the Eagles’ 24-22 win over the Commanders on Sunday afternoon, Dickerson really struggled. As always, take ProFootballFocus grades with a grain of salt, but Dickerson ranked 72nd out of 72 offensive guards through Sunday’s games. That seemed to match the eye test.
Dickerson wasn’t the only player to struggle on Sunday afternoon. But with him, there are serious questions about his future because we know about his past. He has been plagued by injuries dating back to his college career at Florida State and Alabama and the only reason the Eagles were able to steal in him the second round of the 2021 draft was because of those injuries.
Dickerson has played through a ton of things during his first six years in the NFL and was the only player on the roster to get rest days in training camp. Dickerson and Cam Jurgens also went to Medellín, Colombia this offseason for stem cell treatments in an attempt to help their bodies heal after a disappointing 2025 season.
The cruel part of all this is that Dickerson put his body on the line for the team in 2024, heroically playing through painful injuries in the NFC Championship Game and in Super Bowl LIX. That’s legendary status. And then he hurried back for the beginning of last season after undergoing meniscus surgery in mid-August. Dickerson during this training camp said that experience would likely change the way he would handle future injuries; he wanted to avoid returning too early from now on.
After final cuts, Eagles general manager Howie Roseman admitted he went into training camp concerned about the Eagles’ interior offensive line depth, but was pleasantly surprised by the ability of Kendall, Willie Lampkin and Micah Morris. Based on training camp reps, Kendall will be the next guy in.
“I mean, really, really excited about those guys,” Roseman said, “about being able to have those guys, being able to develop those guys, but at the same time, have confidence that if those guys need to play, that they’re ready to play.”