The Philadelphia Eagles added Elijah Mitchell before their second open minicamp practice, bringing another veteran runner into a backfield that already had enough names to make the competition worth watching. The move came as Philadelphia worked to fill a roster spot after trading away A.J. Brown and chose to use it on more depth at running back.
That makes Mitchell the latest former top runner to land in Philadelphia this offseason, alongside Dameon Pierce. It also sharpens the question around a job that is still up for grabs, with Will Shipley entering camp as the favorite over Pierce and Mitchell while Carson Steele remains in the mix. Shipley had just 23 touches last season and handled the primary kick-return role, so the Eagles appear to value him as the cleaner fit even as they keep adding options behind Saquon Barkley and Tank Bigsby.
Mitchell’s appeal is easy to see on paper. As a rookie with the San Francisco 49ers, he rushed for 963 yards and five touchdowns and averaged 4.7 yards per carry, production that marked him as one of the top first-year backs in football. But the rest of his track record explains why Philadelphia is treating him as a depth addition rather than a finished answer. Once the 49ers acquired Christian McCaffrey, Mitchell’s playing time dropped sharply. Since 2022, he has had 120 carries, rushed for 560 yards and four touchdowns in 16 games, and he has not recorded a carry since 2023.
Injuries have been part of that slide. A knee injury limited Mitchell to five games in 2022, a hamstring injury wiped out all of 2024, and he played just one game with the Chiefs in 2025. That history leaves the Eagles with a useful but narrow bet: a runner who once produced at a high level, but whose recent availability makes a bigger role hard to project.
For now, the signings around Barkley point to a camp battle built more on stability than upside. Pierce, Mitchell and Steele are chasing the same reserve job, and Shipley remains in front. The question Philadelphia still has to answer is whether Mitchell can do enough in practice to move from insurance policy to something more, or whether this is exactly what it looks like on day one — another body for a team trying to keep its backfield intact.
