Eagles host potential Johnathan Hankins clone for top-30 visit

It’s been no secret that, as much as the Philadelphia Eagles have been negligent in addressing their needs at linebacker and in the secondary, they’ve been anything but when it comes to strengthening their defensive tackle rotation.

Since 2017 alone, we’ve seen them trade for Timmy Jernigan. They’ve signed everyone from Haloti Ngata to Javon Hargrave to Hassan Ridgeway. They even invested third-round and sixth-round draft choices in Milton Williams and Marlon Tuipulotu respectively a year ago.

During the 2022 offseason, they’ve been equally as busy. They re-signed Fletcher Cox for a lower price tag just two days after releasing him. This came almost one full month after the decision to sign Renell Wren. They’ve been linked to both of the Georgia Bulldogs’ starting defensive tackles from the 2021 NCAA football season in a few mock drafts (Devonte Wyatt and Jordan Davis) even though it’s been learned that many NFL teams have removed Devonte Wyatt from their board entirely.

It appears that, even with all of that being said, they’re still doing their due diligence in learning more about the 2022 draft prospects that play the defensive tackle position.

The Eagles host Travis Jones, someone who’s earning high pre-draft grades.

This one’s very extremely interesting. According to a report from Pro Football Network’s Tony Pauline , the Eagles hosted a potential draft sleeper at defensive tackle during yet another of their pre-draft top-30 visits. This one’s Travis Jones, a six-foot-four, 325-pounder from the UConn Huskies. He was recently compared to Johnathan Hankins by Lance Zierlein in his recent scouting report, and following a nice showing at the most recent Senior Bowl, he’s been a hot topic.

Jones ended his college football run with a nice 11-game showing. He notched 48 tackles and 4.5 sacks. That helped his draft stock a lot after UConn canceled the 2020 college football season due to COVID-19 concerns.

Zierlein gives Jones a pre-draft grade of 6.34 in his analysis, meaning he’s someone who will eventually be a good starter in the NFL. That would explain the comparisons to Hankins, right?

Many see him as one of the top 50 prospects in the draft regardless of position. Keep an eye on him. He could hear his name called sometime during Round 1 of the coming NFL Draft on Thursday.