This hasn't been a season that Jalen Mills would like to remember. Coming off of a Super Bowl victory, Mills maintained his starting role on defense, but this year saw him get beat by team's top Wide Receivers game after game, and then ended up suffering a foot injury in London when the Eagles played the Jaguars. At first, Mills' injury was considered to keep him out just a couple of week, but according to Philly.com's Zach Berman, Jalen Mills is now not expected to return this season due to his foot injury.
As Berman pointed out, the Eagles will now end their season without 3/4 of their Week 1 starting secondary, as Rodney McLeod and Ronald Darb yare both already out for the season. The Eagles will now have to rely on year-two Cornerbacks Sidney Jones and Rasul Douglas as the starters, and rookie Cornerback Avonte Maddox and the newly signed Cre'Von LeBlanc to play slot.
It has certainly been a strange turn of events for Mills. Back on November 26th, Doug Pederson was optimistic that Mills would be able to return and possibly even play Monday Night against the Redskins. It is definitely a funky situation when the Head Coach calls a player "day-to-day"with an injury, and then less than two weeks later the team finds out he will miss the next four games.
This isn't the first time there has been a lack of updates from the Eagles this season when it comes to a player's injury. Running back Darren Sproles hurt his hamstring in practice for Week 2, and at first was considered "week-to-week" but ended up missing more than two months of action before even returning to practice. Safety Chris Maragos has also been on the team's Physically Unable to Perform list the entire season after suffering a leg injury towards the beginning of the 2017 season. The initial impression most get when they see a player start the season on the "PUP" list is that the player will miss the first six weeks and then be ready right around Week 7. However, Doug Pederson and the Eagles medical staff have not even mentioned Maragos' name at all when they give medical updates for the team.
There seems to be a lack of transparency between the Eagles medical staff and Doug Pederson. Pederson relies what he hears from the staff, but then ends up taking the blame when players like Mills, Sproles and Maragos end up missing more time that Pederson announced. Hopefully this offseason some changes are made to the staff so that there is more communication between the medical staff and the coaching staff to keep the fans in the know.
