Eli Stowers Camp Update — August 31: The Wall in Front of Him Thinned
2026 NFL Season · Monday, Aug 31
Eli Stowers made the initial fifty-three-man roster, and the tight ends around him scattered — Grant Calcaterra to injured reserve for at least four games, Stone Smartt released, Cameron Latu claimed by New England. His own August remains a blank: three straight weeks without a charted rep, target or quote.
When Eli Stowers's week moves the numbers, you'll know — every episode, in one weekly email.
The full episode, in writing
Last week we told you the wall between Eli Stowers and a role hadn't thinned. Cut day took a sledgehammer to it. Grant Calcaterra — the veteran sitting between Stowers and snaps — was placed on injured reserve and must miss at least the first four games, per Olivia Reiner at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Stone Smartt, the tight end who caught five passes in the Patriots game while Stowers went unmentioned, was released, per Jeff Kerr at Sports Illustrated. Cameron Latu was waived and claimed by New England, per Kerr. And Stowers himself is on the initial 53-man roster, one of four tight ends alongside Dallas Goedert, Johnny Mundt and E.J. Jenkins, per Dave Zangaro at NBC Sports Philadelphia. Mundt is a new name in this file; all we can tell you is that he's on the roster.
Here's the discipline the moment requires: none of that is a promotion. No coach or reporter has said Stowers moves up, and his own record this week looks exactly like the two weeks before it — he isn't named in the final practice notes, the finale write-ups, or any cutdown tracker beyond the roster list itself. That answers half of what we said we'd check: no source records the first preseason target we were watching for, so we can't report one, and the finale was his last chance at it. The other half — who Philadelphia keeps around him — is answered emphatically, and it's the story: a four-man room, with the veteran who had been between him and the field unavailable for at least the first four games. Opportunity, on the record. Production, still nowhere in it.
For a new listener: June filed Stowers as a development project — a Mackey Award winner and quarterback convert still learning to block, whose realistic doors to early playing time were heavy two-tight-end usage or a Dallas Goedert absence. The second-round pick was never in roster danger. Neither of those two doors opened this week; what happened instead is that the room behind Goedert emptied, which is a different thing and a smaller one. Whether the snaps Calcaterra isn't taking go to Stowers or to Mundt is the first thing the season will tell us, and we'll be listening when it does.
_Data via nflverse._
Keep going