DeSean Jackson made it through his first week back at practice and appears on track to play on Sunday for the first time in over a month and a half.
Doug Pederson said on Friday morning that he was “optimistic” Jackson will play against the Bears.
“That’s the plan right now,” Jackson said on Friday afternoon. “Definitely been a long process, so we’ll see how it goes.”
If you were looking to learn any specifics about Jackson’s abdominal injury, I can stop you right here. The 32-year-old, speaking to reporters for the first time since the injury on Sept. 15, was not interested in going over any details.
Jackson declined to say how the injury happened, whether or not he contemplated surgery and if the injury took longer to heal than he originally anticipated.
Jackson did say this is the first time he’s suffered this particular injury and admitted he didn’t know much about it.
“It’s just the things I’m dealing with right now,” Jackson said. “Not too many answers for it. Just an uncommon injury. We’ll see how it goes, though. Try to do everything I can to take care of it and get right.”
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As for whether or not he plays on Sunday, Jackson said he’ll leave that up to the medical staff and those qualified decision-makers. But all signs seem to point toward a return for No. 10 this weekend.
On Friday afternoon, Jackson didn’t seem overly enthused while talking about his possible return. But I wouldn’t read into that. My guess is that he just wasn’t eager to answer a bunch of questions about his injury. And he also said he doesn’t want to get himself “over-amped” before this game.
Jackson’s potential return would be a huge boost for the Eagles’ offense. In his only real game of the year (he got hurt very early in Atlanta), Jackson had eight catches for 154 yards and two touchdowns. He was the deep threat everyone expected him to be.
And without him, the Eagles offense really struggled to get going at times.
“Tough. Definitely been tough (being forced to watch),” Jackson said. “I know what I’m capable of doing when I’m out there on the field, so to sit back and watch my teammates go through a [stretch] where there are struggles here and there. It’s been the biggest struggle for me, sitting back and just having anxiety and anxiousness to do everything I can to get back out there to play the game we all love to play.”
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