Philadelphia Eagles rookie Miles Sanders’ first-team reps increasing

Philadelphia Eagles second-round pick Miles Sanders has been impressive enough to garner more of a role with the first-team offense this offseason.

Last season, the Philadelphia Eagles couldn’t figure out their backfield situation. Although Jay Ajayi was viewed as the teams’ number one back when the season started, he wouldn’t even last half the season before going down with multiple injuries. His season was over before we knew it. Eventually, the Eagles had to resort to Josh Adams, an undrafted rookie free agent.

While Adams did a nice job, leading the team in yards, the Eagles made it quite clear that he wasn’t the answer to their backfield struggles. Hence the reason why he barley snagged any carries by the time Darren Sproles returned and the postseason rolled around.

This year, the Eagles needed a definitive fix. So they started the offseason off by making a not-so-surprising trade with the Chicago Bears. That’s when the Eagles grabbed four-year veteran running back, Jordan Howard. Being that Howard has been on the decline and entering a contract year, he wasn’t viewed as the end-all, be-all for the Birds. Therefore, they spend one of their two second-round picks on Penn State running back, Miles Sanders.

For the first time in ten years, the Eagles invest a high-end draft pick in a rusher. We never thought we’d see the day with Doug Pederson, Duce Staley, and Howie Roseman calling the shots — but here we are, witnessing a second-round rusher show the Eagles just what they have been missing over the last decade or so.

Now, we aren’t ready to call Sanders the next LeSean McCoy yet — he’s still got a lot of proving to do. However, Sanders might be heading down that road a lot quicker than we initially thought. Before, it seemed as though Sanders was guaranteed to be second in the rotation at best. But now, the Eagles seem to be quickly increasing his role with the first-team offense in training camp.

Sanders sees an increased workload

After missing every spring session with fellow rookies and veterans, Sanders’ training camp role wasn’t expected to be anything significant. Doug Pederson admitted that he was going to ease the rookie into his first training camp, but it seems as though Sanders has caught on rather quickly. And at this point, the Eagles are beginning to throw him some more work with the starters.

Sanders still has about four weeks to prove he’s ready for some regular-season reps. As he will make his preseason debut in a couple of days, that’s when the Eagles will genuinely find out if he’s ready to take his game to the next level or not. Regardless of what happens though, at least Sanders has been impressive enough to garner more of a workload with the starters. Any progress like that for a rookie second-round pick is positive.