Philadelphia Eagles roundup: Blake Bortles to start, injury updates

With the earliest kickoff in Philadelphia Eagles history approaching, for those of us on the East Coast at least, we talk a little Blake Bortles and injuries.

We all knew this day would come when we got our hands on the schedule, and it has. For the first time in team history, the Philadelphia Eagles will play an NFL game in London. Their foils are the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Okay, so none of that is news for any of you. It’s just cool to keep saying. We’ve talked about some players to watch. We’ve also told you about some potential matchups that may decide the outcome.

Now, let’s talk about the opposing quarterback and a few important injuries.

Quite a few guys will be missing from each side for this one.

Guess what? The Jags don’t have a million followers on Twitter. That’s not really anything relevant to the game. We just thought that was interesting for an NFL franchise.

Either way, the 649,000 people who follow Jacksonville on said Twitter account were given the skinny early on Friday morning on who’d be in and out.

Here’s how things are looking:

‘The Birds’ are banged up as well, but it doesn’t appear to be any surprises. It’s a lot of the same stuff we’ve, seemingly been talking about for a month.

Here’s what they gave us on Friday:

Blake Bortles, despite the struggles, is expected to start.

If you think we’ve been talking about Sproles’ hamstring forever, how much longer have we been talking about Blake Bortles‘ inconsistencies? After playing well enough to help his team advance to the AFC Championship Game a season ago, Bortles seems to have remembered that he’s, well, Blake Bortles.

Last week, versus the Houston Texans, he was benched in favor of Cody Kessler as turnovers and and bad play have plagued him over the last several weeks.

His head coach seemed to grow weary with Bortles, but here we are in the United Kingdom, and Doug Marrone seems comfortable with leaving the keys to the offense in the hands of his turnover-prone signal caller.

Despite the struggles, Bortles, in a recent presser, said he won’t change how he plays. Here’s a quote from the man himself:

"I’ve got to go play, be smart, (and) take care of the football (and I have to) do the things that, kind of, we’ve always preached, things that are obviously important as far as playing quarterback. Get completions, be efficient, move the chains, score points and, most importantly, take care of the ball."

Well, we kind of expected that, didn’t we? Here’s what we know. If Bortles doesn’t change anything, Philly should have a big day. We’ll have to wait and see how things go.