Johnson expected to miss rest of regular season

Johnson expected to miss rest of regular season

Eagles Pro Bowl right tackle Lane Johnson suffered an abdomen injury against the Cowboys and is expected to miss the final two games of the regular season, NBC Sports Philadelphia's John Clark confirmed.

The Eagles hope Johnson will be able to return for the playoffs.

ESPN’s Adam Schefter first reported the news that Johnson had a torn tendon in his abdomen.

This is huge blow to the Eagles. Johnson, 32, is one of their best players and is performing as well this season as he ever has. Johnson was just named to his fourth Pro Bowl last week.

Johnson has given up just nine pressures all season and he hasn’t given up a sack in his last 28 games, according to ProFootballFocus. That’s a record.

Since the start of the 2016 season (including playoffs), the Eagles are 59-29-1 with Johnson in the lineup and 9-21 without him. So this is a major blow.

"You know what, he's a tremendous, tremendous athlete and he works his butt off every single day,” Eagles offensive coordinator Shane Steichen said recently about Johnson. "As a coach, you have to respect the heck out of that with the way he goes about his business and the way he leads and the way he fights and the way he plays. He's the best tackle in the league in my opinion.”

After Johnson exited the loss to the Cowboys on Saturday afternoon, he was replaced by third-year backup Jack Driscoll, who serves as the backup at both the right guard and right tackle spots.

The Eagles really have two options going forward:

1. Keep playing Driscoll at right tackle. He’s pretty solid. That gives them a line of (from left to right) Jordan Mailata, Landon Dickerson, Jason Kelce, Isaac Seumalo, Driscoll.

2. Or they can move Mailata to the right side of the line and replace him with backup left tackle Andre Dillard, giving them a line of Dillard, Dickerson, Kelce, Seumalo, Mailata.

That decision will come down to whether or not the Eagles feel the gap between Dillard and Driscoll is big enough to switch up two spots on the line. That’s something offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland normally tries to avoid. But we’ve seen them do both. Last season, the Eagles played Mailata at right tackle for a couple games when Johnson missed some time.

Perhaps there's a chance that Dillard could simply play right tackle. But that seems somewhat unlikely given that he's not the backup swing tackle, which we saw when Driscoll entered the game on Saturday.

The Eagles need to win just one of their two remaining games — vs. Saints or vs. Giants — to clinch the No. 1 seed in the NFC. That No. 1 seed would come with a first-round bye week and would give Johnson (and others) more time to recover from this injury.

On Sunday against the Saints, the Eagles will have a backup right tackle and might still be without their starting quarterback as Jalen Hurts recovers from a shoulder sprain he suffered against the Bears.

For the most part, the Eagles have been pretty lucky most of the year with injuries but they’ve started to pile up in the second half of the year. This one hurts as much as any.

https://www.nbcsports.com/philadelphia/eagles/eagles-lane-johnson-expected-miss-rest-regular-season