Eagles Players Could Sink Or Swim In These Three Off Season Practices

I hope Nate Allen, Danny Watkins, Trent Cole, Brent Celek, Phillip Hunt, Michael Vick, Nick Foles and just about every player on the Birds roster realizes how important the three practices the Birds are having this week. They’re a big deal to Eagles head coach Chip Kelly and possibly a big deal to the future of some of these players.

“I think it’s invaluable,” Kelly said yesterday after practice. “It’s difficult at times to make an evaluation on some guys just watching film, because you don’t know what the play call was or you don’t know how they were instructed on what they were supposed to do on that play. You’re just kind of watching athletic ability and going through it. But when you get to see them on the field for 3 straight days, running around doing things, it gives you a better understanding of what your team is and kind of where they are.”

Kelly made it clear that the Eagles draft could be affected greatly by what he and his coaches see during these three days of practice.  These three days are another segment of Kelly’s evaluation process which began at the beginning of the year when he took the head coaching job.

If Watkins continues to struggle with his feet and body control in both the run and pass games, it will probably guarantee the Birds drafting one of the top offensive tackles.

If all the safeties struggle including the ones they acquired this offseason, it will probably guarantee the Birds drafting a safety with their top pick in the second round.

If they find out that Trent Cole, Phillip Hunt, Brandon Graham and Vinny Curry can’t cover backs out of the backfield, so therefore they can’t make the switch to outside linebacker it will probably guarantee the Birds drafting Dion Jordan with their top pick.

If Brent Celek continues to drop the football the way he did a year ago, the Birds will probably draft a tight end or two in the selection process.  These workouts aren’t in pads and the coaching staff has only put in a small percentage of the offense and defense in, but these workouts are huge in importance to Chip Kelly and his staff.

“It has to,” Kelly answered when asked about these workouts affecting the Birds draft strategy, “Because we can’t ask if we can get more practices. I can’t go back on Friday and ask commissioner [Roger] Goodell, ‘If you give us 2 more days, this would really help us next week.’ It’s all part of the process. We’ll sit down again. Our scouts are out at practice, too . . . we’re all getting feedback. As we said since Day 1, it’s a real collaborative effort.”

“We know guys are going to make mistakes early in this process,” Kelly said. “But are we making things full speed? What kind of energy are they playing with? Are they coachable?”

They’ve already seen all they need to see of All-Pro left offensive tackle Jason Peters.

“Jason looked like what I had hope he would look like,” Kelly said. “First off, he’s a very big human that moves extremely well. But he participated through the full practice . . . It’s probably a good sign when you never looked over and said, ‘Geez, he doesn’t look like he’s himself right now.’ He was moving around and looked really at home at left tackle.”

This is great news to all Eagles fans because a healthy Jason Peters immediately makes the Birds offensive line much better.  I still expect them to grab one of the three offensive tackles, Luke Joeckel, Eric Fisher and Lane Johnson, who are rated as future Pro Bowl level players.  This will allow them to move Todd Herremans inside and place Watkins where he needs to be; on the bench or on the waiver wire.