Philadelphia Eagles center Cam Jurgens detailed how he played through a gruesome injury.
Jurgens severely herniated a disc in his spine during the 2024 regular season. He played through the injury during the Eagles’ Super Bowl championship run and all the way through the 2025 season. Appearing with former NFL stars Will Compton and Taylor Lewan on the “Bussin' With the Boys” podcast last week, Jurgens detailed just how bad the injury was, and how he somehow played through it.
“How’s your back?” Lewan asked.
“It’s getting better every day,” Jurgens replied. “It’s tough. That Super Bowl we won, I had a herniated disc, and then right before the playoffs, my disc like broke off and got wrapped around my sciatic nerve. So, it was just like suffocating my leg. It was hard to walk. I don’t know how I was playing. Like, it was easily the worst month of my life, but then also like kind of the best month of my life because we won the Super Bowl.”
Jurgens took over the starting center job in 2024 after longtime center Jason Kelce retired. He appeared in 16 games, only missing the final game of the regular season when the Eagles—having secured the second seed in the playoffs—rested their starters. He appeared in each of the playoff games leading up to the Super Bowl, but notably did not start the NFC Championship game against the Washington Commanders because of the injury.
“I remember the NFC Championship game, like, trying to get ready for that game, and every day it was brutal. I mean, going out for warm-ups before the game, like, I was just trying to run around and block. I’m like, ‘Yo, I can’t feel my leg right now,’ kept falling. And I’m like, ‘All right, I’ll be suited up and ready, but I don’t know. I‘ll be ready on the sideline if you need me,’” he said.
Guard Landon Dickerson started in place of Jurgens that game. But he went down with a knee injury at the halftime break, forcing Jurgens to play the second half.
“It was just a tag-team effort, just ‘alright, I’m pretty bad, but I don’t think I’m that bad right now. Like, I can play the second half,’” he said.
Jurgens received an epidural to relieve the inflammation, but said he had no feeling in his leg. The numbness went all the way down to his calf, to the point where it felt like he tore the muscle.
He had surgery to repair the injury in the offseason. His rehab process included extensive core work to rebuild his strength and regain hip mobility. He said that in order to have success in rehab, one has to fall in love with the process itself, taking it one day at a time. But he was very used to it, as he said he broke a bone every October for six years between high school and college.
“Every day it‘d be something new,” he said. “And you’re just trying to get out of bed and walk to the facility. I’m just sitting on these physio balls ’cause I can’t sit on a chair. It’s just miserable. But then you get through it and you have a good perspective. When you get injured, you’re like, ’man, when I get healthy, like I’m going to remember like how it feels,' and everything like that.”
But nerves take a long time to heal, and with such a limited time for professional football players to be at their peak, he felt an obligation to go out on the field and play.
“It was just miserable,” he said. “Just the pain, and then getting surgery, and trying to get back for the next year, and it’s always tough having a surgery in the offseason. But when you have back surgery, it is tough. Like, it takes a good year to come back from that, and I’m starting to feel really good, but all year, just trying to get through that. Just a tough year with the back, but it’s feeling so much better.”
