Dontayvion Wicks Camp Update — August 23: Starter Treatment for a Second Week

Dontayvion Wicks caught a red-zone touchdown from Jalen Hurts at Thursday's joint practice in Foxborough, per Dave Zangaro at NBC Sports Philadelphia — the second straight week the scoring connection with the starting quarterback has shown up in practice charting — and on Saturday he again sat a preseason game in which no Eagles starters played, per Reuben Frank at NBC Sports Philadelphia. For the second consecutive week, Philadelphia handled Wicks the way teams handle players whose jobs are decided.

The week's ledger has a debit side, and we log it: one of Hurts' three Wednesday interceptions went off Wicks' hands, per Zangaro, part of a rough first joint practice for the whole offense against New England's defense. He also caught a slant from Hurts for a first down in the same session. That is what a full-time role looks like in August — the touchdowns, the drops, and everything in between land on the same player, because with DeVonta Smith limited all week and rookie Makai Lemon only just back to limited work, Wicks kept taking the number one reps in a receiver room that still has not fielded its projected top three together for a single practice.

Back in June we said the numbers could not settle this player — a 30-catch season in Green Bay set against two traded picks, a 12-and-a-half-million extension, and the vacancy behind the departed A.J. Brown — and that only the depth chart could. The depth chart keeps voting for him; the production case still has to be made in games, and the target math tightens the day Smith returns to full work.

The checkable things: whether Wicks holds the first-team role once Smith is back in team drills, and whether the red-zone looks survive that reshuffle, because scoring opportunity was never part of his Green Bay profile and it keeps appearing here. We'll check after cut day.

_Data via nflverse._