On the Takeoff Podcast, John Clark talks with Jake Elliott and Braden Mann on the Super Bowl Champion Eagles’ upcoming visit to the White House.
After losing backup running back Kenny Gainwell to the Steelers earlier in the day, the Eagles on Wednesday signed veteran running back A.J. Dillon, the Packers' 2nd-round pick in 2020.
It’s a one-year deal. Terms were not immediately available.
The news was first reported by Fox Sports' Jordan Schultz and confirmed by NBC Sports' Dave Zangaro.
Dillon missed the entire 2024 season after suffering a neck injury during a game on New Year’s Eve 2023 in Minneapolis and eventually undergoing neck surgery. He suffered another stinger at practice during joint practices last August at the Broncos’ practice facility in Englewood, Colo.
A day after the Packers lost to the Eagles in the wild-card game at the Linc, Dillon told reporters at locker cleanout day he was optimistic about his future.
“I’ll be good to go next year,” Dillon told Sports Illustrated. “I understand everybody’s got their opinions, but I kind of just focus on myself.
I don’t need to prove anything to anybody. I think my tape speaks for itself. There’s going to be people who want me on their team, who don’t want me on their team. That’s free agency and the nature of the NFL
"I play ball, I play football. So, the best thing I can do is just go ahead and get in shape and get ready to go.”
In his first four NFL seasons, Dillon played in 60 games with 11 starts, rushing for 2,428 yards and a 4.1 average with 16 touchdowns and caught 86 passes for 763 yards and two more TDs.
His rushing average dropped each year of his career – from 5.3 as a rookie in 2020 to 4.3 in 2021 to 4.1 in 2022 and 3.4 in 2023.
But in 2021 and 2022, he was very productive, rushing for 803 yards in 2021 and 770 in 2022 and netting 2,092 scrimmage yards. From 2021 through 2023, his 2,928 scrimmage yards was 20th-most in the NFL and most among running backs who started fewer than 20 games.
With Gainwell gone, the Eagles’ only running backs behind record-setting Saquon Barkley were Will Shipley, a 4th-round pick in 2024, along with futures contract signees Lew Nichols and Tyrion Davis-Price.
Schultz reported Tuesday that Dillon had been fully cleared to return to football, which is encouraging, but he’ll go into training camp having not played since 2023 and needing to prove he can capably back up Barkley.
Dillon played college football at Boston College and had 4,382 rushing yards and 866 receiving yards in three seasons playing for former Temple coach Steve Adazio.
As a rookie with the Packers, he rushed for a career-high 124 yards in a win over the Titans late in the 2020 season. In the Eagles’ 40-33 win over the Packers at the Linc late in 2022, he ran eight times for 64 yards and a touchdown and caught three passes for 24 yards. His 88 yards in that game are 10th-most in his career.
Dillon’s grandfather, Thom Gatewood, was an All-American at Notre Dame and is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.
“Not being able to play after you really push yourself, it sucks, for lack of a better word,” Dillon said in that interview with S.I. in January. “It’s bittersweet not having the team and all the guys who were able to go out there and bust their butt every single day and not get to their ultimate goal of the Super Bowl.
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“But that’s football. That’s life. And I think you can learn something from everything. You can learn something from a loss. You can learn something from spending the year on IR. And, with that, what I learned is just cherishing those opportunities, not taking the game for granted and how much a blessing it is to even go out there and talk about going into Year 6.
“I really just look at everything in an optimistic mindset. I’m grateful to have this opportunity to continue to play the game that I love. So I’m going to put myself in the best position possible to continue doing that.”
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