The Philadelphia Eagles had a full-team practice Wednesday, the first of its kind this season that the media was able to watch. It was short, but there were still some observations to be made.
• As a reminder, OTAs are voluntary. Players not in attendance (in alphabetical order):
- S Reed Blankenship
- LG Landon Dickerson
- EDGE Bryce Huff
- RT Lane Johnson
- WR DeVonta Smith
- FB Ben VanSumeren (knee injury)
- RB/RS Avery Williams
Present, but didn't practice as they continue to rehab injuries:
- LB Jihaad Campbell (shoulder)
- LB Nakobe Dean (knee)
- C Cam Jurgens (back)
- EDGE Nolan Smith (triceps): Smith did some stuff, but not much. He was wearing an arm brace.
The name above that stands out is of course Huff, who had a rough first season in Philly last year. Maybe he had a good reason for missing practice. Dunno. The Eagles didn't offer any for him. Again, these practices are voluntary, but Huff is making $17 million per season, and he was a healthy scratch for the Super Bowl. It reminds me a little of when Marcus Smith skipped OTAs back in the day, and he was released at the start of training camp.
I have a June 1 primer already written and ready to go for the weekend. We covered Huff within, but I suppose his absence from OTAs is relevant right now, so here's a screenshot sneak peek:
Depth charts!
First-team defense:
EDGE: Jalyx Hunt
iDL: Jordan Davis
iDL: Moro Ojomo
EDGE: Azeez Ojulari
LB: Zack Baun
LB: Jeremiah Trotter, Jr.
CB: Quinyon Mitchell
S: Sydney Brown
S: Andrew Mukuba
CB: Adoree' Jackson and Kelee Ringo split reps
SCB: Cooper DeJean
• Stock up 📈 for Mukuba. Vic Fangio could have stuck Tristin McCollum in there with the first team because he's a vet and Mukuba is a rookie, but he put Mukuba right in there.
• DeJean played outside corner in base defense, and in the slot in nickel. No surprise there. The Eagles don't play a lot of base defense, so we likely won't see a ton of DeJean on the outside, but he's too good a player to take off the field, and he possesses the versatility to play multiple spots.
• Ringo and Jackson split CB3 reps with the first-team defense. Jackson was up first and probably got more reps than Ringo (I didn't count them), but I thought it was close to 50-50. Still, it's not ideal that Ringo (a) didn't get more reps, and (b) wasn't even first up. Ringo did more 11-on-11 reps than Jackson, it seemed.
• Jalen Carter got to take it easy during team drills. (As did A.J. Brown and Saquon Barkley on the offensive side.)
First-team O-line, with Dickerson, Jurgens, and Johnson out:
LT: Jordan Mailata
LG: Matt Pryor
C: Brett Toth
RG: Tyler Steen
RT: Darian Kinnard
Steen and Pryor got first-team reps over newcomer Kenyon Green. Kinnard also got to play at first-team RT over newcomer veteran Kendall Lamm.
I wouldn't put much stock in Toth getting first-team reps over rookie Drew Kendall.
Second-team O-line:
LT: Myles Hinton
LG: Kenyon Green
C: Drew Kendall
RG: Trevor Keegan
RT: Kendall Lamm
Other depth chart notes:
• Will Shipley and A.J. Dillon split reps at running back.
• Lewis Cine got a few first-team reps at safety.
• Dorian Thompson-Robinson was the QB3 over rookie Kyle McCord to start the spring. That's normal. Make the kid earn it.
Other practice notes
• The Eagles won the Super Bowl partly because they were so good at forcing turnovers, and sure enough, the first drill of OTAs…
• Will Shipley was very active as a receiver. I thought he ran good routes, and had some juice after the catch.
• A.J. Dillon is 6'0, 247 pounds, with massive legs. Obviously, he is big, but it's always interesting to see these guys for the first time in person. And well, can confirm, dude is big.
• Barely any passes hit the ground. Jalen Hurts and Tanner McKee were both efficient getting the ball out quickly, mostly on short throws. McKee did air out a pretty deep ball that was completed for a TD to rookie UDFA Darius Cooper. That was probably the play of the day.
• Second-year safety Andre' Sam was around the football quite a bit. One of the balls that did hit the ground was on a pass breakup by Sam while covering Grant Calcaterra.
• Kevin Patullo spoke with the media for the first time as an offensive coordinator. The theme that he repeated was putting players in the best position to succeed, which is fairly obvious, but not all coaches do that. That's a good big-picture goal, I suppose.
He was also asked who his coaching influences were, and he kinda brought his answer back to an example of putting players in position to succeed.
"Obviously Nick [Sirianni] has been huge on me here currently, but prior to that, my biggest influence was Chan Gailey," Patullo said. "I was with Chan a couple different places, started in Kansas City when I was with Herm Edwards. I was a young coach then. He had just come from Georgia Tech at that point, and just going through that with him was very unique.
"In 2008, we lost a couple quarterbacks. We ended up having Tyler Thigpen come in and I'll never forget, we get into a staff room and the walls are all white, there's nothing on them. He goes, 'Alright, we got to figure out a new offense for this week.' He was willing to do anything and try anything to be successful. We ended up developing this no-huddle system. We were in the Pistol and in 2008, nobody knew what the Pistol was in the NFL.
"We were successful for the most part. We didn't win a lot of games, but we moved the ball with a bunch of guys that we didn't know really if we could do that with. So him being able to show, 'Look, we do what we have to do to win, it doesn't matter. It doesn't have to look a certain way' was huge."
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