Eagles Camp — Aug 23: Hurts Throws Five Picks in Foxborough

Jalen Hurts threw five interceptions across two days of joint practice in Foxborough — three on Wednesday, two more on Thursday, both of those to the same Patriots cornerback — in the new offense's first extended work against a defense that wasn't its own. Dave Zangaro at NBC Sports Philadelphia charted the damage: Wednesday's three included one that went off Dontayvion Wicks' hands and one born of a miscommunication with Britain Covey, and Thursday's pair both landed with Marcus Jones. The week had opened in the same key at home, where Michael Carter II jumped an intermediate route for a middle-of-the-field interception Jeff McLane at the Philadelphia Inquirer called the play of the day, on a Monday when Vic Fangio's first unit held the upper hand for roughly 25 snaps. The full Thursday ledger is fairer to Hurts than the count alone: he also threw red-zone touchdowns to Dallas Goedert and Wicks, hit Will Shipley on a 40-yard wheel route, and drove a clean two-minute drill, per Zangaro. Five picks in three practices is the number Eagles fans spent the week arguing about; two off his own receivers' hands and routes is the asterisk they argued with.

The defense had a much better trip. Riq Woolen intercepted a Drake Maye pass intended for A.J. Brown — the former Eagle spent Wednesday catching seven balls against Woolen and Quinyon Mitchell, per Zangaro — and would have taken it back 99 yards if practices allowed returns. Jalyx Hunt forced a Rhamondre Stevenson fumble and recovered it. The sessions ran hot enough that Lane Johnson grabbed a Patriot's helmet after a hard hit on Saquon Barkley, with Nick Sirianni wading in to separate bodies, per Zangaro — Barkley himself, for the record, looked fast and explosive running wide zone all week by the same account.

Saturday's game, a 24 to 21 loss at New England with no Eagles starters playing, may have settled the roster's most watchable battle. Tanner McKee went 16-of-22 for 173 yards and two touchdowns without an interception, and Reuben Frank at NBC Sports Philadelphia called him sharp and decisive and wrote that he should be the second quarterback. Andy Dalton went 3-of-10 for 44 yards — he is now 6-of-16 for 64 yards across two games — and Frank's assessment was that Dalton has looked all of his 38 years. Around the quarterbacks, the finds kept coming: running back Carson Steele piled up 117 scrimmage yards with six catches, including a 28-yard touchdown he finished by hurdling a defender; Ty Robinson followed last week's sack in Baltimore with two more +3 quarterback hits, playing himself from bubble to lock in Frank's reading; and Joshua Weru, the International Pathway rusher from Kenya with three weeks of American football behind him, added a sack of his own. Jeremiah Trotter Jr., last week's defensive star against the Ravens, opened this one with a four-yard sack of Tommy DeVito, and camp-darling receiver Darius Cooper answered last week's drops with a string of catches from Dalton, including third- and fourth-down conversions, per Dave Spadaro's in-game coverage at the team's website. Frank also graded Sean Mannion's play-calling a clear week-over-week improvement, with four drives of 50-plus yards. The night's scare came on the opening kickoff, when running back Ja'Quinden Jackson left in an ambulance; Spadaro relayed during the game that Jackson had strength and movement in all extremities, and Frank reported he flew home with the team.

The health file moved in both directions. The good direction: DeVonta Smith practiced Monday for the first time in two weeks, limited to individual work, per Josh Alper at NBC Sports' Pro Football Talk, and stayed limited through both Foxborough sessions; rookie receiver Makai Lemon went from catching off the JUGS machine to limited joint-practice participation, per Zangaro; and both starting corners, Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean, returned to full work Monday. The bad direction is one sentence with a lot in it: Fangio said he is concerned Jonathan Greenard — the offseason's marquee edge addition, still on the physically-unable-to-perform list with a pectoral injury and still without a camp practice — will miss the start of the regular season, per Alper, a harder line than the "couple weeks" the coordinator gave a week earlier. Jakorian Bennett's knee kept him out all week, and Tank Bigsby's toe and Grant Calcaterra's back are new entries.

Back in July we previewed Philadelphia as the one team in its division whose profile pointed down — an 8-and-4 record in one-score games that history tends to claw back, a 15th-ranked offense elite only in the clutch situations that don't repeat — with Sean Mannion's under-center, motion-heavy rebuild as the counter-argument. We've been checking that preview against camp every week, and this was the first week the rebuild faced live opposition: it threw five interceptions and also produced its cleanest two-minute work of the summer, all of it without the top two receivers, so the argument is genuinely open rather than settled in either direction.

What to watch next: whether Greenard comes off the physically-unable-to-perform list when rosters cut to 53 on Sunday, August 30, and whether the quarterback-two call goes McKee's way when it does. We'll check after cut day.

_Data via nflverse._