After myriad injuries, Eagles center Cam Jurgens is ready to implement a new offense
Jurgens says the stem cell treatment he underwent in Colombia this offseason is "helping me feel better."
At one point on Wednesday, Eagles center Cam Jurgens was ready to summon a doctor to the auditorium at the Jefferson Health Training Complex.
It was Jurgens’ first time speaking to reporters since last season ended, which means there were plenty of questions about his offseason trip to Colombia to undergo a stem cell treatment to help manage his back pain.
Time will tell what sort of impact it has on the two-time Pro Bowler on the field, but Jurgens certainly seemed to be much more comfortable on Wednesday as he snuck bites of chocolate ice cream during his news conference after the Eagles wrapped up their mandatory minicamp.
“I know it’s helping me feel better, and that’s the main thing,” Jurgens said. “Pain has gone down; daily living, quality of life is better. But that’s what you expect from an offseason.”
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That — actually having a somewhat normal offseason — is the biggest difference between now and one year ago for Jurgens. He had surgery to repair a herniated disk after the Eagles won the Super Bowl. During a podcast appearance in March, Jurgens said his disk “broke off” before the playoffs that year and “wrapped around” his sciatic nerve.
“It was hard to walk,” Jurgens said on the Bussin’ With the Boys podcast. “I don’t know how I was playing. It was easily the worst month of my life but also the best month of my life because we won the Super Bowl.”
Surgery meant that entire offseason was dedicated to rehab, and while the Eagles worked him back slowly in camp and tried to help manage his workload, Jurgens dealt with pain and rarely looked like the center who replaced Jason Kelce with relative ease in 2024.
“It’s nice having a fresh, clean slate and getting to train throughout the offseason,” said Jurgens, who turns 27 in August.
It’s an offseason of change for Jurgens, not just with his body but in the building. The Eagles are learning and installing a new offense under first-year coordinator Sean Mannion. The new system means more wide-zone blocking that the Eagles haven’t deployed previously. And it’s not longtime offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland teaching those new techniques, but new position coach Chris Kuper.
Kuper being a former player, Jurgens said, means he offers a different vantage point and perspective compared to Stoutland. But Jurgens’ experience with wide-zone techniques has come just from watching other teams use it.
He said he has enjoyed attacking the new scheme. There certainly are different philosophies in the style of play. Running the ball is more of a committee approach, Jurgens explained, and not just on the five linemen. The offseason program has been about learning how to block different plays, where your help is, and how a running back might attack a certain play.
“It’s wiping everything clean and forgetting what you used to do,” Jurgens said. “I like this system. I’ve always liked teams that run it. I feel like it lets you be a little bit more of an athlete. It lets you run around and play free. So I’m excited for that.
“It’s fun to learn new techniques and ways to do something. You can cut an apple so many ways until you find out a new way to cut an apple. … You just learn new ways to do things and you may like it more, you may like it less. At the end of the day, you need to get the job done.”
The offensive line will play a big part in where the 2026 season goes. It was a big reason the Eagles won the Super Bowl in 2024, but injuries to Jurgens, Landon Dickerson, and Lane Johnson, helped contribute to a slide offensively in 2025. Johnson is back from his right foot injury, and the 36-year-old said Tuesday that he loves “becoming an older player.” Dickerson, who dealt with multiple lower-body injuries in 2025, also went to Colombia for stem cell treatment.
Playing through pain in some capacity probably will be part of Jurgens’ career until he’s done playing, whether the stem cell treatment works wonders or not. In addition to dealing with back pain, Jurgens missed three games in 2025 because of a knee injury and also suffered a concussion.
“You’ll be hard-pressed to find a football player that’s not dealing with some sort of pain,” Jurgens said. “It’s just the name of the game, especially when I get older.”
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Managing the pain requires efforts to keep inflammation down and figuring out a routine to prepare for game days, Jurgens said.
“I play in the NFL, they pay me money, and so I’m going to do everything I can to get my body right,” Jurgens said.
“You always think, ‘What are the pros and cons to this?’ If the pros outweigh the cons, you’re going to do it.”
Hence the trip to Colombia, where Jurgens had a procedure that isn’t regulated in the United States. It’s been a long and painful 16 months since the Super Bowl, before which Jurgens chose to have an epidural so he could play.
“It’s always about having perspective,” Jurgens said. “That’s about darn near everything in life. Always about having perspective of where you’re at now vs. where you were.”
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