Eagles trading Cam Jurgens fully accelerates a mid-season rebuild on the offensive line | Five Thoughts
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Another day, another seismic shift along the Eagles offensive line.
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If you’d printed out my quick thoughts on Lane Johnson announcing his retirement on Tuesday evening, the ink probably wouldn’t have been fully dry by the time Howie Roseman elected to trade Cam Jurgens to the Baltimore Ravens for a trade package that includes a 2028 second-round pick.
Here are five quick thoughts on the move, what it means for the 2026 Eagles and beyond, and what Roseman had to say about the decision.
1. In an impromptu news conference with reporters, Roseman pushed back on the notion that the Jurgens trade means the Eagles are already declaring themselves as sellers this season.
It’s a fair question given the way things have gone the last few weeks. With Lane Johnson retired, Jurgens traded and Landon Dickerson injured, the Eagles will now be forced to retool along the offensive line on the fly and are dealing with a litany of injuries in the short-term as well.
Still, Roseman said the Jurgens trade shouldn’t be viewed in conjunction with Johnson’s surprising announcement that he’s stepping away from the game to focus on his mental health less than 24 hours earlier.
“We weren’t looking to move Cam,” Roseman said. “Obviously the Ravens have been looking for a center. They lost three centers. I speak to [Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta] a lot. Originally I told him it wasn’t something we were looking to do. Over the last 24 hours it got to a point where we felt like it could be a win-win. For them, getting a player who has been a two-time Pro Bowl center for us, and for us, being able to get the picks we’re able to get and use that money to focus on players.”
“What happened with Lane is in a separate bucket here,” he added. “Then you have to make a decision, all right, what’s the value of this, how can this help us going forward? As for the team this year, high expectations for the team this year. It’s very early in the season.”
2. Even separating Johnson’s retirement, it’s hard to argue with the compensation the Eagles got back for Jurgens.
He was struggling at left guard and hasn’t looked like the same player since suffering a chronic back injury during the Eagles’ run to Super Bowl LIX in 2024. Not to mention he’s the fourth highest-paid center in the NFL and was under contract through the 2030 season.
The Eagles were bullish on Drew Kendall stepping into the starting lineup dating all the way back to the spring, and my guess is the organization’s belief that he can be a long-term starting center for the team played a factor in the decision to move on from Jurgens.
“He’s doing a nice job,” Roseman said about Kendall. “We have a young player there.”
3. Unlike a few weeks ago when the Eagles spent the week obfuscating about whether it would be Kendall to step into the lineup (and where he might slot in), Eagles players seemed less invested in keeping things under wraps on Wednesday.
All signs point to Willie Lampkin stepping up. The second-year interior lineman from the University of North Carolina said he was “excited for his opportunity.” Eagles left tackle Jordan Mailata said he thinks he got one day of work with Lampkin at left guard during training camp, but admitted quite a lot’s happened since whatever day that may have been.
“Honestly, after this week, training camp feels like it was last year, mate,” Mailata said.
My expectation is Lampkin will slot in at left guard, but there is at least an argument to be made he projects as more of a center in the NFL because of his unorthodox, 5-foot-11, 290-pound frame. But as I mentioned above, it seems the organization has real trust in Kendall holding down that center spot, and Lampkin at least has extensive college experience playing at guard to fall back on.
Keeping Kendall at center also allows the Eagles to be flexible at left guard if Lampkin struggles. Roseman said he was “excited” to get Dickerson back from injured reserve when discussing the team’s options on Wednesday, which is noteworthy given the uncertainty about whether the 28-year-old will be able to fully recover from the litany of injuries that he’s suffered in his career. Dickerson has missed the last three games with what he described during an apperance on 94.1 WIP as a bone bruise in his knee, but will be eligible to come back when the Eagles return from their game against the Jaguars in London.
4. Especially as Johnson’s retirement offers a reminder of the importance of mental health, don’t discount the emotional toll these last few weeks have had on the Eagles roster, and offensive line in particular.
Mailata talked extensively about the rawness of losing Johnson and Jurgens in a 24-hour span, on the back of watching his best friend Dickerson land on IR to start the season as well. As I wrote in my takeaways from Johnson’s retirement, Mailata is now the only member of the offensive line that started Super Bowl LIX still in the lineup going into Sunday.
The 29-year-old is now suddenly the elder statesman on the Eagles offensive front, something that he genuinely seemed to have still been processing when he talked to reporters on Wednesday.
“I’m trying to figure out my emotions, because these are two guys that I’ve played a long time with,” Mailata said. “We’ve won a lot of games, we’ve lost games. We’ve played great. We’ve played bad. We’ve done it all. When stuff like this happens, you tend to think about everything that you could have done better. You gotta wear two hats, one as a friend and one as a captain of this team. Right now, I’m choosing to be a captain.”
Players, including Mailata, will often harp on the “business” side of the league being an accepted reality. That doesn’t mean these guys are impervious to being affected by all the change that’s happened to start the season, though.
5. Final thought, written a few hours removed from all the commotion of the day: The Eagles find themselves fully in a transition on the offensive line now.
They’ve made bets, at least in the short-term, that some combination of Lampkin, Kendall, and Bell can be part of a rebuilt group tasked with replacing one of the best collections of offensive-line talent the NFL has seen in recent memory. And they’ve made that bet having just split with one of the league’s best talent developers at the position in Jeff Stoutland.
It’s fair to ask whether Roseman has done enough replenishing the offensive line for this sudden rebuild given the shaky ground Johnson, Dickerson, and Jurgens were on even entering this year’s training camp. As I said on our show Tuesday before the Jurgens trade, it’s hard to argue with any individual pick Roseman has made in each of the last few drafts, but the cumulative affect of missing out on the offensive line prospects at the latter stages of the first and second rounds over the years has now shown up.
The best argument by my estimation would be in favor of taking former Arizona State tackle prospect Max Iheanachor last April instead of Makai Lemon (something I suggested in our shadow draft episode in the spring). Outside of that, an aggressive trade up the draft board may have been the only revisionist history suggestion worth levying toward Roseman.
If the trio of Kendall, Lampkin, and Bell are up to the challenge, the Eagles will find themselves in a similar situation picking late in the first round again in 2027. If they’re not, though, that issue may “solve” itself …