Makai Lemon Camp Update — August 23: First Limited Reps Since Early August

Makai Lemon practiced this week. That is the news, and after the summer he has had, it clears the bar: the first-round receiver was listed as a limited participant at both joint practices with the Patriots on Wednesday and Thursday, per Dave Zangaro at NBC Sports Philadelphia — his first practice involvement of any kind since the hamstring shut him down in early August. As recently as Monday he was still confined to drill work and the JUGS machine, per Zangaro, so the week traced an actual upward line: machine, drills, limited team settings, in that order.

What it did not include is a full practice, a team-drill rep anyone charted, or a snap in Saturday's preseason loss at New England, where no starters and no rehabbing players dressed, per Reuben Frank at NBC Sports Philadelphia. And the install he has been missing kept moving without him — the two Foxborough sessions were the new offense's first work against an outside defense, and the slot reps his draft slot argued for went again to the healthy bodies, with Dontayvion Wicks catching another red-zone touchdown from Jalen Hurts.

Back in June we declined to project Lemon — a twentieth-overall pick off a Biletnikoff Award season, with genuine vacated targets waiting but a soft-tissue asterisk already attached — and the cost since then has been the calendar, a rookie missing nearly the entire installation of a new offense. This was the first week that shortened the distance instead of lengthening it. Limited is not back. It is, finally, a direction.

The checkable things: whether Lemon reaches full practice before rosters cut to 53 on Sunday, August 30, and whether Philadelphia gives him any snaps in the preseason finale to start the on-ramp, because a rookie's first live rep in this offense has still not happened. We'll check after cut day.

_Data via nflverse._