Eli Stowers Camp Update — August 23: Still Invisible in the Practice Files

Eli Stowers went another full week without appearing in a Philadelphia practice report or game write-up. He is absent from Dave Zangaro's coverage of both joint practices with the Patriots at NBC Sports Philadelphia and from Dave Spadaro's 10 observations on Saturday's 24 to 21 loss at the team's website. Quiet week number two, and this one came with less excuse than the last: backup tight end Grant Calcaterra missed the entire week with a back injury, per Josh Alper at NBC Sports' Pro Football Talk, which is precisely the kind of opening a rookie is supposed to fill loudly.

The tight end who filled it instead was Stone Smartt, who caught five passes for 37 yards in the game, per Spadaro. Ahead of both of them, Dallas Goedert kept catching red-zone touchdowns from Jalen Hurts, this week at the joint practice, per Zangaro. So the wall between Stowers and a role — a healthy, featured starter, with veterans behind him — did not thin out even in a week when injury gave it the chance to.

Back in June we filed Stowers as a development project: a Mackey Award winner and a record-setting athlete, a quarterback convert still learning to block, whose realistic doors to early playing time were heavy two-tight-end usage or a Goedert absence. Two preseason games and three weeks of camp coverage in, neither door has opened, and his first noted August target still has not happened.

The checkable things: whether Stowers records that first target in the preseason finale, and where he lands when rosters cut to 53 on Sunday, August 30 — a second-round pick is in no roster danger, but who Philadelphia keeps around him at the position will say how it sees the year. We'll check after cut day.

_Data via nflverse._