The Eagles head to Chicago trying to start the regular season 3-0 for a third time in the Nick Sirianni era.

Before the Monday Night Football matchup between Jalen Hurts and Case Keenum’s Chicago Bears, here are a few things I learned in the locker room in the lead-up to the game:

Super Stowers

My first observation entering the locker room this week was Zach Ertz’s new spot in th Eagles locker room.

Not because of the fact that a few dozen reporters and camera operators swarmed the stall about one-third into the space, although that crowd did draw the curiosity of a handful of players coming in from practice. (Ah, the new kid on the black,” Jordan Davis said in passing. “Actually, I don’t think I should call him a kid.”)

What stood out was Ertz’s proximity to Eagles rookie tight end Eli Stowers, situated in the neighboring stall and, the Eagles hope, soon to be under the wing of one of the most productive players in franchise history.

“I don’t think it’s an accident,” Ertz said when asked about his locker placement next to Stowers’. “I’m excited to work with him. I’ve heard a lot about his story, a lot about the talent that he has. Not many tight ends can jump 44 inches and run 4.5 [seconds in the 40-yard dash]. Everyone’s got superpowers in this league, and he’s got to play to his superpowers. I’m looking forward to helping him unlock that mentally, physically, to be at his best.”

Although the list of tight ends to rise to prominence with Ertz as a veteran in their room begins with Dallas Goedert, Ertz acknowledged Thursday that his time being a significant resource to younger players probably began in earnest after he left Philadelphia in 2021. He shared a tight-end room with Trey McBride in Arizona who, like Stowers, started slowly his rookie season as a receiving-first tight end.

“I’ve really embraced that role in my later stages of life — football life,” Ertz added. “Really just pouring into these young guys. Early in my career, I probably wasn’t the best to some of the young guys, but now I try and give them everything I got and help them make a difference.”

Ertz has been a full participant in each of the Eagles’ practices this week and I’m told he is 100% recovered from the knee injury he suffered last January. If he does play, it will be an important milestone given the doubt he had about his playing career in the weeks that followed the scary knee injury that ended his 2025 season.

“I didn’t really know if I was going to be able to play football again, but I told myself I was going to give myself a shot to not go out like that,” Ertz said. “I really committed myself. … As a dad now, my perspective has changed. I want to give my sons something to look at when they’re going through adversity, like, ‘Hey, dad went through a really tough time,’ so I can give them some wisdom from what I went through to push through. For me, I was going to do everything I could to get back so I could live with it.”

Elliott gives Harry Kane ‘a shot’

I’d be remiss if I didn’t take advantage of the international soccer world’s intersection with the NFL this week, so I asked Jake Elliott about The Athletic’s report that Harry Kane is hoping to finish his decorated playing both in Major League Soccer and as a kicker in the NFL.

For those unaware, Kane is a 33-year-old soccer player from England, one of the best strikers of his generation and currently playing for Bayern Munich, one of the world’s biggest clubs.

He probably has the power to compete against NFL specialists, but surely becoming one of the 32 best kickers available to the NFL is more complicated than that?

“I think he has a shot,” Elliott told PHLY. “He’s obviously an incredibly unique talent. I think there’s going to be a unique learning curve as well. It’s so hard to say.”

Elliott said Kane’s biggest challenge will probably be mastering the technique of kicking a football on a high trajectory rather than driving the ball on a line. The 31-year-old Eagles kicker said goalkeepers typically have an easier time switching from soccer to football because of the difference in technique, and even those players often take a few years to fully groove the motion.

Cowboys kicker Brandon Aubrey is the best example of a professional soccer player who successfully made the swap, but Elliott noted even Aubrey needed four years working behind the scenes after his soccer career to find his way to the USFL in 2022 and the Dallas Cowboys a year later.

“He had to try to latch on it for four years before he finally got good enough to get a shot in the NFL,” Elliott said. “It just depends how quickly he can find contact and how repeatable it is for him. So, yeah, I think he has a shot. But there’s a lot of really good kickers, though.”

“I think it’s going to be tough,” Elliott added. “But I do think there’s a chance for somebody for somebody who is that talented. There’s obviously a natural talent baseline. He obviously has that. But it’s also one of those things where he’s been kicking a ball a certain way for so many years. How are you going to transition to a full operation, hitting the ball up in five yards, I think that’s the biggest thing. Can you get an operation, get the ball off that fast and get the ball up that fast?”

Hurts honors Steve McNair

In an enlightening moment during his mid-week news conference, Jalen Hurts explained why Steve McNair was on his mind during the Eagles’ 24-2o win over the Tennessee Titans last Sunday.

Hurts, 28, said he spotted a picture of the Titans legend on the Eagles’ commute to Nissan Stadium, and the impact McNair had on him when he was a kid washed over him.

“It was a really good feeling and a bit emotional feeling, pulling up to the stadium and seeing Steve McNair on the wallpaper outside,” Hurts said. “He’s the only one that I’ve looked up to — I got to meet, you know, [Michael Jordan] and, you know, build relationships with him and Tom Brady and all these other guys. Steve McNair is the only one that I’ve truly looked up to and watched and been enamored by and never got to meet him. So I think that was special for that reason. I was reminded of that when we pulled up to the stadium and it kind of hit me there.”

McNair was murdered in 2009 in Nashville, Tennessee. He played for the Titans from 1995 to 2007, meaning Hurts grew up watching him become one of the league’s most prominent Black quarterbacks in a league that still maintained a stigma around them. A first-round pick out of Alcorn State in the Southwestern Athletic Conference, McNair is also one of the few NFL quarterbacks to hail from a historically Black college or university.

“I can go on and on about his ability, the demeanor,” Hurts said when asked what he idolized about McNair. “Then it came from the SWAC, so nobody expected it. He was kind of before his time. And so there’s a lot of history at the position and being a Black quarterback and the history of the Black quarterback in Philadelphia, I think he falls right in suit with some of the greats that have come here and some of the things that have had to have been overcome and the example that he set.”