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During his Friday press conference, Philadelphia Eagles head coach Doug Pederson indicated he’s hopeful Darren Sproles can still play this season despite the fact the 35-year-old running back aggravated his hamstring injury earlier this week.
“I am optimistic that he can play, yes, I am,” Pederson said. “That’s the God’s honest truth.”
On Sunday morning, NFL insider Ian Rapoport threw out a timeline for when Sproles might possibly return to the field.
Darren Sproles, who injured his hamstring this week just as he was set to return, is expected to miss multiple weeks with this latest injury, sources say. The team will be cautious, making sure when he’s back, it’s for good. One estimate pegged it at 3-4 weeks.
The Eagles were also seemingly cautious about Sproles’ previous hamstring injury, considering he missed eight weeks before returning to the practice field. But as we know, their supposed caution didn’t even allow him to practice more than one day before getting hurt again. This is to say that it’s hard to count on Sproles to be healthy with this new timeline.
Assuming Sproles will be healthy enough to return in a few weeks, that could put him back somewhere in this range of games:
Week 13 - vs. Washington Redskins (Dec. 3, 8:15 PM ET, ESPN) Monday Night Football
Week 14 - at Dallas Cowboys (Dec. 9, 4:25 PM ET, FOX)
Week 15 - at Los Angeles Rams (Dec. 16, 8:20 PM ET, NBC) Sunday Night Football
It’ll obviously be hard to count on him to get/stay healthy, but the Eagles could really use Sproles back on the field. At the very least, he’d be a big upgrade in pass protection. Wendell Smallwood has been a disaster in that area, Corey Clement isn’t being trusted in that role for whatever reason, and Josh Adams is an undrafted rookie free agent who can’t reasonably asked to be the answer there.
2018 will very likely be Sproles’ last season in the league so it’d be nice to see him get back on the field and contribute for his sake. Here’s hoping it happens.