PHILADELPHIA - Eli Stowers’ first summer in Philadelphia did not look like the kind that usually builds instant confidence.
The Eagles’ rookie tight end missed the final few practices and the preseason finale with a hamstring injury, and even before that he was having a hard time standing out. The No. 54 overall pick, once viewed as Dallas Goedert’s eventual successor, is not close to being a Week 1 answer. Right now, he looks more like a candidate to be inactive on game day than a player ready to make an immediate impact.
Still, the Eagles are not sounding the alarm.
Over the last two days, both general manager Howie Roseman and tight ends coach Ryan Mahaffey made it clear they are looking at Stowers through a longer lens. Roseman, speaking Monday about Stowers and struggling first-round receiver Makai Lemon, said he doesn’t have “any doubt about what they’re going to be in the NFL over time.” He also said he still believes both players will contribute in 2026.
Mahaffey followed with his own endorsement on Tuesday.
“I’m really excited about Eli’s development. We knew coming in he was highly intelligent, has very good football character, good athlete who had transitioned from a different position and is now playing tight end,” Mahaffey said.
“For any rookie as you’re coming into the NFL, it’s an adjustment. ... I’m excited about the trajectory that he’s on.”
Those two phrases - “over time” and “trajectory” - say plenty. Nobody in the building is pretending Stowers is ready to walk into the lineup and be a difference-maker next Sunday. That was never the expectation.
What the Eagles would have liked, and what fans surely wanted to see, was more production and more splash plays this summer. Instead, Stowers finished the preseason with three catches for 12 yards in two games, playing 39 snaps.
The athletic traits that made him such a buzzworthy prospect were mostly absent from view. The rare movement skills that turned heads at the NFL Combine didn’t really show up, and the matchup nightmare he became while winning the 2025 Mackey Award - college football’s top tight end honor - never fully materialized in August.
Part of that is the learning curve. Stowers has talked about the mental challenges of getting used to the NFL, and he is doing it while learning a new-ish position. He was a quarterback only a few years ago, didn’t move to tight end until 2023 at New Mexico State, then transferred to Vanderbilt in 2024 and starred there over the last two seasons in the SEC.
There was always going to be a blocking component to his development, but now he also has to absorb the demands of Sean Mannion’s offense, where tight ends need to do a little bit of everything. That reality helps explain why the Eagles carried four tight ends on their initial 53-man roster and why signing 35-year-old free agent Zach Ertz remains on the table.
For now, Stowers is not ready for everything this offense asks of him. But the Eagles are clearly betting that time will help close that gap.
“I think Eli, athletically and from a character standpoint, has the ability to do the things that we’re going to ask him to do,” Mahaffey said. “Most importantly, I know he’s going to work consistently, each and every single day, to make himself the best player he can be to be the type of teammate that he needs to be.”
“Growth is not going to be linear,” Mahaffey added, speaking generally about rookies.
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