The Eagles were not the only ones practicing today, the fans were doing some practice tailgating. I saw good effort all around.
Before practice started the Eagles had a skydiving team land in the stadium, very fucking cool.
So let’s just get to the Military Appreciation and the Anthem. The honored military personnel were on the field, a giant U.S. Flag covered a third of the field, the Anthem was being sung and suddenly a single prop engine broke through the reverent tones of our National Anthem …. Fans looked up and saw at approximately 1000ft the dreaded and disrespectful Cowboys fans and player paid for banner. To Eagles fans credit, no one said a word, everyone waited and listened respectfully to our Anthem until it was finished… Then a ruckus that shook the ground was unleashed in the form of a chant, a chant we all know to be true, “DALLAS SUCKS!” This went on for a few minutes while the field was cleared and ended promptly as practice began.
Now for the actual practice notes, I mainly tried to focus on the QBs so I’ll give my thoughts on each of them, then just write about who stood out to me. I should mention that the Eagles were wearing special military jerseys with the defense wearing white and the offense wearing green, while a cool gesture it made reading defensive players numbers tough so this will mostly be notes on offensive players. At the end of practice the Eagles player gave the Military personnel present the jerseys btw. Also there were 26 different periods of activity during this one practice so needless to say there was a ton of activity to cover and note, so this is just what I was able to see.
QB:
Sam Bradford– Crazy thing, I actually saw Sam run with the ball on an option… Frightening. I think we found someone who might make Foles look, “Speedy,” in comparison. Other than that Sam was good, something that gets said ad nauseum is he is extremely accurate, leads receivers so they can get YAC. I noticed he seemed to be throwing a lot to Huff. Sam had several touchdowns to a variety of receivers like Ertz, Matthews and Huff ect. I did see one tipped pass that turned into an INT, didn’t see who later heard it was Thurmond.
Mark Sanchez– I think we all know what The Sanchise is at this point in his career. He was unspectacular, solid but nothing special. I can say that he does seem to have his arm back, didn’t see deep, or even middle, passes that died in the air, but that being said I didn’t exactly see a lot of deep passes from him. I hate to use this term but he looked like a game manager, made safe throws that got to the receivers’ general area. There were some drops, some his fault some the receiver’s fault. Like I said, nothing special.
Tim Tebow– Tim looks like a RB…. Nuff said. Joking, but not really. He can gun passes towards receivers general area, but is the receiver still there? Maybe, maybe not. I saw a pass in the flat to Kenjon Barner that almost went thru the guys’ hands, after the guy had already made the catch. Tebow looks best running and seemed to do that more than actually passing.
Matt ‘Mark’ Barkley– I did not see him much and honestly if he was up I was probably distracted by something else more entertaining like grass growing or wondering where my beer went. He doesn’t have the noodle arm that I remember seeing when he first got to the league but clearly has the weakest arm of the group. He did have a nice TD to Trey Burton.
Ryan Mathews– I was really surprised by him, I had seen him play a few times, but in person he seemed much quicker, much more elusive and very decisive. I did not even remember his number going into this practice but eventually after having written: 24 crisp cut, 24 good explosion through a hole, 24 shows natural hands catching the ball or 24 with a nice run after the catch. I decided to look up who the hell 24 was, like I said very surprised.
Darren Sproles– After 11 years in the league you kind of figure you have seen and know what to expect from a player. But DAMN Sproles is shifty and quick, he caused a lot of coverage issues out of the slot. During a the special teams practice it was him and Huff that stood out by finding lanes and breaking ankles.
Byron Maxwell– I know I said it was tough to identify defensive players but Maxwell, and the fans, made it easy. Everytime Maxwell made a play the crowd in front of me would go nuts, and he made a lot of plays. He was able to stick with WRs and block passes. He had a really nice break up on Jordan Matthews, it looked like Matthews had a step on Byron and the ball looked perfectly placed deep pass, by Bradford FYI. Byron kicked in a second gear, recovered the separation and disrupted the pass, amazing play.
Jordan Matthews– Maybe after having watched him all last year I just kind of have high expectations for him, but after watching today I felt like I wanted more out of him. Then I looked through my notes and saw how many plays he actually made, yeah I did see 2 drops, but so what? I saw at least 1 TD catch, high pointing a corner pass, over a defender, to the end zone, amazing. I may have seen another TD, he caught a 5 yard pass and just blazed up the field, only reason I said may was because it was towards the opposite end zone from me and since there is no tackling to the ground he could of gotten tagged by the defense and just finished the run to the end zone, which is something he’s known to do. Slightly off topic but Jordan was returning an errant ball from the end zone, he threw a perfect 30 yard bomb, better throw than anything I saw from Tebow or Barkley.
Zach Ertz– He had an up and down day. He had a case of the dropsies, but kept on following them up with big plays. I saw him catch some TDs and have at least 3 drops. He seemed to of gained some speed in the off season. Despite the flubs QBs kept throwing towards him, I’ll take that as a vote of confidence in his abilities, if nothing else it shows he’s able to get open.
Josh Huff– He finally seemed to of caught up to the speed of the NFL. He got a lot of work, returning and catching. QBs seemed to be targeting him a lot, I noticed he was able to shake of defenders and seemed to catch just about everything thrown his way.
Others: Rowe had a nice pass deflection, Agholor showed speed and made a nice sideline catch after I saw him talking with a coach for a bit, not sure what that was about but it seemed like he was looking for clarification on his route or maybe the drill. I didn’t mention Murray at all… Honestly he didn’t really stand out to me, I didn’t see any mistakes, I saw some nice explosion out of him during the RB drill, didn’t see much of him in the passing game and this practice and my focus was mainly on the passing game.
Well, that’s about all I have to say. I’m sure you all will love this post and let me know.
Dallas Sux.
Kellys_Chipadelphia
Blog gambler extraordinaire, beer snob, knows where to find the best mussels in town.
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