Eagles open practice: Nick Sirianni on preseason playing time; Birds announce watch party for Brazil game; Landon Dickerson injury news

After leaving practice earlier in the week with a knee injury, Landon Dickerson was sidelined for the team’s public practice on Thursday.

Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said the starting left guard isn’t expected to miss “too much” time with the injury before Thursday’s practice and it’s worth noting Dickerson returned to watch the remainder of Tuesday’s practice after coming up gingerly during one-on-one drills.

Dickerson attended Thursday’s practice as well, wearing Lane Johnson’s No. 65 jersey while Johnson sported his linemate’s No. 69 for practice. Reserve lineman Brett Toth started at left guard in Dickerson’s place for the first team session of the evening.

When assessing whether the Eagles’ starters need playing time in the preseason, Thursday’s public practice will factor into the equation for coach Nick Sirianni.

The Eagles’ starters, especially Jalen Hurts, have played sparingly during Sirianni’s tenure, but the coach conceded last year he might reconsider the approach following a sluggish start to the team’s season opener against the New England Patriots.

When asked where he stands on playing the starters with the team’s preseason opener against the Baltimore Ravens set for next Friday, Sirianni said he has time to make the decision, but pointed to sessions like Thursday’s as part of the reason he may not need to play the ones.

The Eagles won't be playing at home — in fact, they won't even be playing in North America — but that doesn't mean you can't take in some football from Lincoln Financial Field during Week 1 of the NFL season.

The team announced Thursday that they will be hosting a watch party at the Linc on Friday, September 6, for the season opener against the Green Bay Packers, which will be taking place over 4,500 miles away in São Paulo, Brazil. It will be the league's first game in South America.

Even with the team on another continent, the stadium doors will open at 6 p.m., more than two hours before the game's 8:15 p.m start time, and the watch party will have several special features, including large LED screens to show the game and what the team is calling "Brazilian menu offerings with a Philly twist." There will be Eagles legends signing autographs, as well as live performances by the Eagles cheerleaders, their drumline, and DJ Diamond Kuts.

Last season, DeVonta Smith logged over 1,000 receiving yards for a second consecutive campaign. The Eagles receiver was one of just seven league-wide to rack up over 1,000 yards, 80 catches, and seven touchdowns in each of the last two years.

Still, through five practices of training camp, A.J. Brown said that Smith is capable of reaching another level in 2024. The proof, according to Brown, is in Smith’s performance so far.

“Nobody has been able to cover DeVonta all camp,” Brown said on Thursday. “He’s having an amazing camp. I think the offense is doing a really good job, just really trying to execute it. It takes all players. Jalen’s been doing a great job as well.

Expect heat indexes near 100 when the Eagles hold their open practice at Lincoln Financial Field starting at 6:30 p.m.

And for those who spend time in the free parking lot, which opens at 3:30, the conditions inside the stadium may seem like a cold wave.

The air temperatures will be in the mid-90s all afternoon, but with an all-day baking by the sun, the reading near the lot surface could approach 110 to 120 degrees, said Patrick O’Hara, meteorologist at the National Weather Service Office in Mount Holly.

After moving to Philadelphia, Niki Mailata, who is Tongan, was overjoyed to find a Hawaiian restaurant in the city, Poi Dog. She and her now-husband, Eagles left tackle Jordan Mailata, are Pacific Islanders, and it’s hard to find authentic Pacific Islander cuisine on the East Coast.

Enter Kiki Aranita, founder and owner of Poi Dog. Aranita is from Hawaii and opened Poi Dog in Philadelphia, serving her spin on Hawaiian cuisine. The Mailatas quickly fell in love with the restaurant, which began in 2013 as a food truck on Temple’s campus and became a brick-and-mortar space about five years later, and were frequent guests until Poi Dog closed in 2020 during the pandemic.

But they continued to follow Aranita. Niki frequently attended her pop-up events, and when Aranita launched her Poi Dog sauces, the Mailatas were some of her early supporters. They enjoyed the sauce so much that Jordan, an ambassador for Australian food truck G’Day Gourmet, brought her Huli Huli sauce to G’Day Gourmet owner Mike Peacock, and a collaboration was born.

Michael Clay has seen more than 400 XFL kickoffs on film during this offseason as the Eagles’ special teams coordinator prepares for the NFL season with a new kickoff format that is among the biggest changes to league rules in a long time. He studied the different angles and schemes and tried to learn as much as he can.

But Clay’s most informative lesson might come Thursday night, when the Chicago Bears and Houston Texans meet in the Hall of Fame game in Canton, Ohio. Because while the NFL pulled elements from other leagues, including the XFL, the hybrid kickoff rule change league owners approved in March is a bit different. Thursday’s game will offer Clay his first chance to see how his peers are implementing the new format with their teams.

The Eagles have not practiced the full version of the new format during any of the first five practices media members have been permitted to attend. They have worked on various elements of it, though.