It ended at Lehigh on Tuesday with Andy Reid circling the perimeter of the field and high-fiving all the fans within reach…
Next up is a serious preparation at NovaCare in Philly for the New England Patriots… and the inevitable toll of the bell for the next round of cuts…
The plan is to use the Patriots game as the main preseason tuneup for the regulars, who will go at least for the entire first half. Coach Andy Reid finally revealed this part of his plan, which had been the worst-kept secret of the summer, on the final day of training camp at Lehigh University on Tuesday.
“We’re going to play our guys quite a little bit here this coming game against New England, which is Monday night, and then … they probably won’t play quite as much against the Browns,” Reid said. “It will be at least be a half [for the regulars against the Patriots]. We’ll see where it goes from there.”
Because the starters didn’t play that well in their 24-23 victory over Pittsburgh to open the preseason last Thursday night, they all welcome the opportunity to play more than they usually would in this next game.
Thanks to a scheduling quirk in which they visit the Cleveland Browns in Week 3 of the preseason and again to open the regular season two weeks later, it is doubtful the starters will play as much as they usually do in that third preseason game, which usually calls for them to get the most work of all the exhibition games. Teams generally don’t like to reveal too much about their personnel or game plans and play packages to opponents they will face again such a short time later. Furthermore, because the Eagles will have played their second preseason game just four nights earlier in New England, the turnaround is not long enough to get their regulars fresh again to play at Cleveland.
Okay… that makes strategic sense.
“I can’t wait,” safety Kurt Coleman said. “It’s going to be great competition, so I want to get as many reps as I can against Tom Brady. We want to be as ready as possible, but we also want to be as healthy as possible going into the regular season. But I think with this game against New England, we need as much game-time experience as we can get. It’s going to make us better.”
Okay… I’m down with that…
My only question is: how do you know who our “regulars” are at this point in the preseason? Aren’t there ongoing position battles still being waged?
INJURY UPDATE—CB Nnamdi Asomugha has a split lip and whiplash but no concussion after colliding hard with S Nate Allen on Monday, according to Reid. “I don’t know [how long he will be out],” Reid said Tuesday morning. “We’ll see here. He’s sore today, so he won’t practice today, but we’ll see. Day-by-day, we’ll just take it and see how he does.”
Reid also had nothing new to report on DT Mike Patterson, whose skull plate has not sufficiently healed to participate in camp following brain surgery in January to repair tangled blood vessels.
“The doctor’s been on vacation for a while, so he’s just kind of getting back here and getting back in the swing,” Reid said. “There’s no progress report to give you.”
NEWS OF THE DAY—THREE BREAKOUT PLAYERS: CB DRC, RB Dion Lewis, DE Brandon Graham.
THREE NON-BREAKOUT PLAYERS: CB Nnamdi Asomugha, S Jar-Jar Jarrett, T Demetress Bell.
PLAY OF THE DAY: Safety Nate Allen’s Pick-6 of a Trent Edwards pass in the final scrimmage session.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: “You’ve got to come together as a team, and that takes a little time. When I reflected at the end of the season, it was too late but I felt like we had joined hands and brought that thing together as a team, which you wanted to do sooner than what we did.” — Eagles coach Andy Reid, on last season’s failure.
DEADLINES APPROACHING: The NFL’s deadline for trimming rosters to 80 players is Aug. 28. Teams must be down to 53 players by Sept. 2.
GOODBYE, LEHIGH: Coach Andy Reid on the final day once again paid tribute to the Lehigh University support staff and credited them as the main reason the Eagles keep coming up here. They’ve already re-signed to come back next year.
And in our time-honored tradition of honoring fallen Eagles of the past:
Jimmy Carr, who won an NFL championship in 1960 with the Philadelphia Eagles, has died in Indiana. He was 79.
Carr played nine NFL seasons with the Chicago Cardinals, Eagles and Washington Redskins. He was the starting left cornerback on the 1960 title team and had 13 of his 15 career interceptions with the Eagles. Carr also played one season with the Montreal Alouettes of the CFL in 1958.
After he retired, Carr served 24 years as a NFL assistant coach, including two years as the Eagles defensive coordinator from 1970-71. He also coached two years in the USFL as the defensive coordinator for the Denver Gold from 1983-84 and three years in NFL Europe from 1995-97. Carr was part of the defensive coaching staff for the New England Patriots’ AFC Championship team in 1985.
He was inducted into the NAIA Hall of Fame in 1962, after a college career at Morris Harvey, which is now the University of Charleston.
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