Rookie Josh Oliver Set to Make NFL Debut Against Bengals

After missing the first six weeks of the regular season, rookie tight end Josh Oliver is going to play in his first NFL game on Sunday.

After being sidelined since the first week of August with a hamstring injury that forced him to miss the first six games of the 2019 season, Jacksonville Jaguars rookie tight end Josh Oliver is finally prepared to make his NFL debut this Sunday against the Cincinnati Bengals.

“I have been dreaming of this moment since I was seven. I couldn’t be more happier,” Oliver said in the locker room on Friday.

Many assumed Oliver, a third-round pick, would have a large role in the offensive coordinator John DeFilippo’s offense from day one. Past offenses DeFilippo coached in used a tight end extensively, and starting quarterback Nick Foles has always been known as a passer who likes to frequent targeting the position.

But when Oliver went down with what head coach Doug Marrone described as a “significant” hamstring injury on Aug. 2, that expectation changed. Instead, Oliver would miss over two months of practice and games, leading to him becoming somewhat of an unknown for the Jaguars.

“Yeah. And you just have trust in the player you saw in college and the skillset,” DeFilippo said Thursday. “There’s some unknown there, he hasn’t practiced a lot, and that’s what it is. And you can sugarcoat it and do all of this stuff, but it is what it is. He has not practiced and has not played.”

Marrone said the Jaguars have been able to bring Oliver along slowly over the last several weeks, with his reps in practice increasing as the days have gone on.

Oliver was limited in Wednesday’s practice but was a full participant in practice for the first time during the regular season on Thursday. He was once again a full participant Friday, and Marrone said after practice that he would play vs. the Bengals.

And while that unknown aspect of what Oliver can bring to the table remains, DeFilippo is still confident in his young receiving threat.

“But that being said, if I was going to bet on a young man to go in there and perform well it would be Josh,” DeFilippo said Thursday. “So, I’m not scared to put him in there at all, and I know our coaching staff is not scared to put him in there at all on Sunday if that’s the case.”

With the Jaguars missing two of their primary tight ends due to a season-ending ACL injury to James O’Shaughnessy and a concussion and ankle injury sidelining Geoff Swaim, Oliver will likely be depended on in his first-ever NFL game. The Jaguars simply can not afford to slow roll it with their rookie -- they don’t have the depth to do so.

But Oliver seems to be aware of the high expectations and the pressure. Listening to him tell it, he would have been setting those high expectations regardless of how the rest of the tight end position looked.

“Nobody puts more pressure on myself than myself. I am always going to expect the highest,” Oliver said. “So I am just going to come out and compete and do my best.”

Oliver will be tasked with providing an intermediate threat for fellow rookie Gardner Minshew against the Bengals. The two had a lot of reps together in practice before Oliver went down with injury, and Minshew liked what he saw out of his newest weapon.

“He’s one of the faster guys. There’s a reason we drafted him as high as we did. He’s a big guy, can really move,” Minshew said last Wednesday before Week 6’s game vs. the New Orleans Saints.

“I think it’s easy to forget about the kind of stuff he was doing when he was healthy. He was stretching the field vertically for us and we’re all excited to get him back out there.”

While it may be too optimistic to expect Oliver to make a large-scale impact in his first-ever NFL game, he is hoping that chemistry he has with Minshew will aid him on Sunday and beyond. After all, the Jaguars offense will need it to.

“I think that helps tremendously. We talk a lot, we are like brothers, so it definitely helps,” Oliver said.