Landon Dickerson’s toughness didn’t stop the Eagles from having a plan, and they’ll need another for Week 2

It was about midway through the fourth quarter Thursday night with the Eagles clinging to a one-score lead, when Landon Dickerson’s body had taken enough.

The soon-to-be-27-year-old left guard returned to the practice field two weeks after an Aug. 13 surgery to clean up the meniscus in his right knee. It was the latest procedure in a football career that has featured a few of them, but it wasn’t the ailment that had him on the injury report this week as the Eagles prepared for their season opener vs. the Dallas Cowboys.

Dickerson missed practice Monday with a back injury, and it was his back that gave out. Dickerson doesn’t come off the field easily, but the pain was too much to bear. Dickerson walked slowly off the field and into the tunnel, and on came Brett Toth, who helped the Eagles navigate the final minutes of their 24-20 victory.

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“I feel like every time I say it, but I can’t harp on it enough: What he puts himself through on behalf of the team, it’s just nothing short of selfless,” Toth said. “We see it every day, what he’s been dealing with and we’ve seen it all the way into last season and his first two seasons. He’s just a fighter, man. He might be the toughest son of a bitch on this damn team. That’s just a fact.”

Dickerson’s toughness — he played through most of last season with a wrist injury and had a bum knee in the Super Bowl — didn’t stop the Eagles from having a plan, however.

They entered Week 1 knowing Dickerson’s fragility, and so Toth was given more reps than usual, even during the days Dickerson practiced. Those extra reps allowed for more cohesiveness, Toth said, and better communication when he got into the game for a critical couple drives late in the fourth quarter.

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Those extra reps this week and during the two weeks when Dickerson missed practices following his surgery were valuable. Toth, 29, has been in and out of Jeff Stoutland’s offensive line room since 2019, and while he’s taken his share of mental reps over the years, nothing replaces the real stuff.

“People don’t realize in this game, so much of it is being able to feel how the guy next to you moves, how y’all fit blocks together,” Toth said. “As a backup, unfortunately if all those reps go to the starters — as they should — you have to apply it mentally."

This week was different given Dickerson’s shaky status.

“I like to think I did well when I was called upon,” Toth said.

Dickerson told his teammates after the game that he would be fine, but that’s what he always says. This is, of course, the same guy who showed up at the NovaCare Complex with a cooler of Miller Lites the morning after his surgery.

“He says he’s good, but he was …,” left tackle Jordan Mailata said as he stiffened his 6-foot-8 frame and trailed off. Toth has been around Dickerson long enough now to know how to “read the context clues and connotation in which he says things,” he said.

They weren’t saying Dickerson would definitely miss more time, of course. The extent of his injury is unclear. The Eagles have a little extra time to heal up before their Sept. 14 game in Kansas City.

But any missed time for Dickerson would test the depth of the offensive line, a storyline that emerged as a real concern during training camp and preseason contests. Yes, Toth has been around the team for a while, but he has rarely played meaningful snaps. The Eagles traded C.J. Gardner-Johnson to Houston for Kenyon Green to add guard depth, but the former first-round pick was inactive Thursday night.

“Fortunately we have a little longer of a time here,” Toth said. “Let him get back on his feet. We all know Landon, he’s still going to fight through it no matter what they tell him.”

And like this week, even if Dickerson is practicing, even if he plans on playing, there will be a plan for his absence.

“I think they’ve done a great job, the O-line factory here of next man up,” Mailata said. “Brett was already ready to go. We had talked about it during the week, got reps in individual, got reps in team. Even the reps that I got with Brett during training camp, those are valuable and they paid off tonight. It’s just a credit to the coaching staff, to Stout, and to Brett for being ready.”