“Let’s get it back to the Eagles,” as Matt Nahigian would tell Rob Ellis and Harry Mayes.

Doug Pederson spoke to the media ahead of Sunday’s home game against Graham Gano and the Carolina Panthers.

Most significant were a couple of injury updates provided by the head ball coach:

  • Team has a plan at defensive tackle after releasing Destiny Vaeao. Haloti Ngata (calf) is “getting close” and is day-to-day in terms of readiness. Tim Jernigan keeps “progressing” but is not yet ready to practice. Pederson is “hopeful and optimistic” regarding Jernigan, which I would assume means he does play sometime this season.
  • Treyvon Hester is a part of the defensive tackle puzzle and they’ll continue to progress with him each week.
  • Jason Peters is doing fine and will practice today. RE: the biceps injury – “There’s something there. He definitely can play. No concern with injuring him any further.” Doug also said there’s no need to give Peters a rest to deal with niggling injuries.

More notes after the jump:

  • Darren Sproles is day-to-day (hammy)
  • Corey Graham is also day-to-day with a hammy: “probably not going to practice today based on where he’s at, but is progressing nicely.”
  • Dexter McDougle can be a role player, a situational guy for the Eagles, they have familiarity with him from a year ago and they’re comfortable with him filling a need and role, will get him coached up
  • Lane Johnson is good to practice (ankle)
  • team is comfortable and confident going 12 and 13 personnel (two and three tight ends) and throwing the ball out of those formations, sort of forces teams out of their base defense and into nickel

That’s about it, I think. I started to zone out during the final 2-3 minutes of the press conference.

FYI, the “plan,” I would assume, is to use more of Michael Bennett at defensive tackle on Sunday. Cox/Bennett and hopefully Ngata is your DT rotation, with Hester giving you 15-20 snaps (he actually played 15 last week).

At defensive end you’ve then got Brandon Graham, Derek Barnett, Chris Long, Bennett, and even Josh Sweat, who played seven snaps against the Giants.

Yeah, they’re thin at tackle, but I think they’ll be okay this week. They wouldn’t have released Vaeao if they didn’t think Haloti would be ready to go.

Ngata big deal.