Eagles Linebacker Returns To Practice Feeling Fully Ready To Play

Dean has been at every practice since OTAs, watching and encouraging his teammates. He couldn’t participate, obviously, but he did whatever he could to be involved.

“For me, I knew I was going to be back, and I knew how my body felt,” he said. “Like I said, I’ve been cleared for a good bit right now, so it’s like I didn’t feel like I was apart from the team. I feel like I’m still on the team. I didn’t want to miss a beat. I literally did everything with the team other than practice and play.”

He had surgery shortly after tearing a patellar tendon on Jan. 12 in a playoff game against the Packers. It’s an injury that is difficult to return from, according to a study by Northwestern Medicine researchers who created the NFL’s Orthopaedic Surgery Outcomes Database on return-to-play rates.

The RTP (return to play) rate for patellar tendon ruptures was 56.8 percent based on a 2025 study released earlier this year, with a median return time of 11 months. Dean has been out about nine months.

“I control what I control, continue to ball and get better mentally, physically and emotionally,” said Dean.

Exactly how he will be used remans to be seen. Neither head coach Nick Sirianni or defensive coordinator Vic Fangio have talked to him about what his role will look like. Sirianni answered a question about that by talking generally on how much he loves the linebacker room as a whole.

“The only conversations we have had are about the opponent we’re playing,” he said. “That’s it. We haven’t really talked about nothing else but scheme, what we’re doing this week, and things like that. That’s the only thing.”