Top 25 Eagles Ranked: Josh Sweat Climbs to No. 8

Philadelphia Eagles Josh Sweat, who suffered a gruesome knee injury that nearly cost him the bottom part of a leg, checks in at No. 8 in our top-25 countdown of current Eagles.

PHILADELPHIA – We are inside the top 10 of our top-25 ranked Philadelphia Eagles, so, naturally, the heavy hitters are coming out to play.

Checking in at No. 8 is a player whose numbers have done nothing but go up since he entered the NFL five years ago.

He was a big part of the Eagles franchise record 70-sack attack a season ago. His durability and reliability haven't been an issue despite concerns over a devastating knee injury in high school that had a doctor telling him he would probably never play football again and that there was a good chance the bottom of one of his legs wold need to be removed.

There’s no denying that he has already outplayed his value from where he was drafted in the fourth round.

He is:

DE JOSH SWEAT

All Sweat has done is get better since he was the 130th player taken overall in the 2018 NFL Draft.

The Eagles didn’t rush Sweat in his rookie season. He played just nine games and only 7 percent of the defensive snaps. He has blossomed since then compiling four sacks in 2019 in 34 percent of the snaps, six sacks in 2020 with 38 percent of the snaps, and seven sacks in 56 percent of the snaps to make his first Pro Bowl.

Last year, he bloomed. His snaps decreased slightly, to 52 percent, since the Eagles had a killer rotation of pass rushers, yet he piled up 11 sacks with 23 quarterback hits.

It nearly never came to this.

Sweat was considered one of the nation’s top five recruits in high school until he suffered a knee injury. He recalls a conversation with a doctor shortly after it happened.

"He's like, 'Hey, man, you're probably not going to play football again; I'm 98 percent sure. And we're probably going to have to remove the bottom of your leg,’” Sweat said. “And that's how he left it. He said it was likely with the dislocation, especially at that angle—because the artery runs around the back."

Sweat recovered, though and the rest is history. Well, not quite history just yet.

Still just 26, Sweat figures to get even better. Last year, he was our 10th-ranked player. Now, he’s No. 8.

Who knows how he can climb going forward?

The process behind the top-25 list started with Eagles beat writers Ed Kracz and John McMullen putting together their own top 25 players independent of each other’s rankings and then assigning point values, with 25 points awarded to the player ranked first on each list, 24 to the player ranked second, and so on, with one point going to the player that was put 25th.

The highest ranking from either reporter breaks any ties in the ballot.

Here’s how the rankings shake out so far:

No. 25 – RB Kenny Gainwell

No. 24 – LB Nicholas Morrow

No. 23 – S Reed Blankenship

No. 22 – S Terrell Edmunds

No. 21 – K Jake Elliott

No. 20 – LB Nakobe Dean

No. 19 – DT Jordan Davis

No. 18 – DT Jalen Carter

No. 17 – RB D’Andre Swift

No. 16 – DT Milton Williams

No. 15 – DT Fletcher Cox

No. 14 – CB Avonte Maddox

No. 13 – DE Brandon Graham

No. 12 – CB James Bradberry

No. 11 – OG Landon Dickerson

No. 10 – LT Jordan Mailata

No. 9 – CB Darius Slay

No. 8 - Sweat

Ed Kracz covers the Philadelphia Eagles for SI's EaglesToday.

Please follow him and our Eagles coverage on Twitter at @kracze.

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