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The DiCecco Daily: Notes, Observations From Eagles Third Training Camp Practice · Inside the Birds: A Philadelphia Eagles Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, what's happened? Everybody? Welcome into this edition of the
• 0:12
  Checho Daily.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: I am your host, Andrew de Checo and today was
• 0:16
  day three of Eagles training camp, well technically day four.
• 0:21
  The team held a private walk through Friday, but everything
• 0:24
  resumed as normal today Saturday morning.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: It was a nice practice. It was very efficient, fast.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Paced and detailed, as the Eagles practices tend to do.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: There's not a lot of standing around.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Everything is sort of equipped for to have a purpose
• 0:41
  and keep everything moving along. And today's practice covered about
• 0:45
  an hour and forty minutes. It was categorized as green,
• 0:48
  and again this is still the acclamation period, so you
• 0:53
  have to absorb some of these observations with a little
• 0:57
  bit of context. We'll obviously learn a lot more once
• 0:59
  the ads come on. And I also like to throw
• 1:02
  this disclaimer out there. You never want to make too
• 1:05
  much over just a handful of days of training camp.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: There's still a long way to go. All we can.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Do is give you the information and what we're seeing,
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  but you don't want to get too carried away one
• 1:16
  way or the other, as this is a very long
• 1:19
  process and things tend to change.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: The pads, as I mentioned, are not even on yet.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: But as it were, let's start with the notable news,
• 1:27
  and that is linebacker Johad Campbell. If you noticed, I've
• 1:31
  been leading with him a lot as I give you
• 1:33
  my recaps. The Eagles first round linebacker mixed in with
• 1:37
  the first team today. Now before that, he had been
• 1:40
  exclusively working with the second team, really with fellow rookie
• 1:44
  linebackers smile minded. But he did get some first team work.
• 1:48
  But Jeremiah Trotter Junior still took on the lion's share
• 1:51
  of those reps alongside Zach Bond.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: But I think it's something that you can.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Expect to see moving forward. Campbell's starting to eat into
• 1:59
  Trotter's work glow.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: He's ahead of schedule.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: You have to be over the moon if you're the
• 2:03
  Philadelphia Eagles and he's moving around really well. I can't
• 2:08
  wait to see how he had quits himself once the
• 2:10
  pads come on, and that's really where you're able to
• 2:12
  get a better gauge of where certain players are in
• 2:15
  terms of their.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Development and progress.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: But the quarterback jaywhen hurts we start, We're gonna have
• 2:23
  to mention him early on because I think out of
• 2:26
  the three practices This was probably the one where he
• 2:30
  missed some throws that he probably should have had. There
• 2:32
  were some ball placement issues. There was one play in
• 2:35
  particular where DeVante Smith had the sky to real in
• 2:39
  a short pass. There was another instance where in a
• 2:42
  red zone period, Jaywhen overshot Dallas Goddard in the back
• 2:46
  of the end zone, who did have a step on
• 2:48
  Reid blanket ship, but it kind of climbed off his
• 2:50
  fingertips despite his best efforts to bring it in. And
• 2:53
  on a short pass to Johan Dotson during a team period,
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  if you remember those those big signs that are or
• 3:00
  those big uh the distractors to sort of impede your
• 3:05
  vision as a quarterback, that are held up around the
• 3:07
  line of scrimmage. Today, it looked like rabbit ears. But
• 3:10
  one of those rabbit ears deflected a jay when Hurts
• 3:13
  pass that was intended for Dotson.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: But there was also some really good throws.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: That I thought Jaywen made today, and one of which
• 3:21
  was when the Eagles were focusing on third downs. The
• 3:24
  defense was really getting the better of the offense on
• 3:27
  those third down situations, and then eventually you saw Jaywen
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  Hurts On Cork a deep shot about twenty five thirty
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  yards down the field to wide receiver aj Brown, and
• 3:37
  it could not have been more on the money, and
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  I think it really showcases the timing and the chemistry
• 3:44
  between the two players. Now, the player in coverage happened
• 3:47
  to be cornerback Kiley Ringo. The coverage was not bad
• 3:50
  at all. Keiley was right there. He could have done
• 3:53
  well to look back. He didn't locate the ball very well,
• 3:56
  but the coverage was fine. I think it really just
• 3:59
  high highlights the chemistry and the dynamic between Hurrtz and Brown, who,
• 4:03
  as I outlined, seemed to already.
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  Speaker 1: Be in mid season form.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: And that happens when you just get those reps with
• 4:09
  one another, you already have a better feel and a
• 4:11
  better sense for what each player is trying to do
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  or where they're going to be. But that was that
• 4:18
  was one of the ones that really stood out to me.
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  And then during the red zone period in which I
• 4:23
  talked about the play to Goddard, there were two really
• 4:26
  good throws. Jaywen connected with DeVante Smith on back to
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  back touchdowns, and the first one was a dart at
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  the goal line where Smith had better position than Cooper
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  Degen did the past he sort of met him at
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  the goal line and it was the touchdown. And then
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  on the next play, I saw that DeVante crossed the
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  face of rookie linebacker Smile Monden and Junior was he
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  was trailing a little bit Mondon Junior, but he did
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  get a little bit of that jersey as Smith crossed
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  the pylon. But I do think that that kind of
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  really highlights what you're seeing from Jalen Hurts. He's fitting
• 5:02
  balls into tight windows and keeping the offense on schedule,
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  which is something that Kevin Patula mentioned before practice. It's
• 5:09
  been largely a very good summer for Herts through three practices. Again,
• 5:14
  take everything that you hear and everything that you see
• 5:16
  with the grain of salt.
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  Speaker 1: It's still very.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: Early here in the process, but I thought that those
• 5:21
  plays in particular are notable.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Vegles.
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  Speaker 2: Also, to start practice, we're going through some kick return
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  drills and first up we're wide receiver Avery Williams of
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  running back will Shipley, and the next pair was an
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  Isa Smith and Danny Gray and veteran aj Diwan also
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  factored into that Keland Robinson, another running back, and Montreal
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  Johnson Junior, another running back.
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  Speaker 1: I can tell you this.
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  Speaker 2: Johnson Junior is already a player that I've highlighted as
• 5:51
  someone to watch during preseason play. He does have some
• 5:54
  bursts to him, and I think that he's going to
• 5:56
  be that rugged, physical between the tackles runner that's going
• 5:59
  to that's really going to make it interesting when you
• 6:04
  watch preseason games because he does have good contact balance
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  and a player that I really like coming out of Florida.
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  I'm curious to see how he does once the pads
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  come on and they start popping. I think he's really
• 6:15
  gonna shine in that area, and there are a number
• 6:17
  of players who fit that criteria.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Off the top of my head. EJ.
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  Speaker 2: Jenkins at six foot six, two hundred and sixty pounds
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  strikes me as a player who's really going to thrive
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  when the pads come on and he can really impose
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  his will on defenders Cooper dejen He also aligned at
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  safety when the Eagles were in base and then once
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  they shifted to nickel, it was third year safety Sidney
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  Brown opposite Reed blanket ship Drew mccouba. The rookie also
• 6:43
  saw a healthy amount of snaps with the starters. Here's
• 6:47
  the interesting quote from Sidney Brown because I thought that
• 6:51
  he mentioned something notable that I think that there's this
• 6:55
  misconception that he was lead frog in the pecking order
• 6:59
  by a Tristan McCollum last year and sort of that
• 7:03
  he was falling out of favor that I think is
• 7:06
  a big time stretch. Okay, Sidney Brown played seventy nine
• 7:09
  snaps last season, but I don't think it's fully appreciated
• 7:12
  that it takes about a year and a half to
• 7:14
  recover from the knee injury, and I just kind of
• 7:17
  want to debunk that. And Sidney even, you know, sort
• 7:21
  of supports my thought here. And when I asked him
• 7:24
  about what his off season focus was, he talked about
• 7:27
  getting his knee one hundred percent healthy. He said, just
• 7:30
  getting my knee right. As much as I wanted to
• 7:31
  be one hundred percent, I wasn't fully one hundred percent.
• 7:34
  Yet now my knee is feeling perfect. I've put a
• 7:38
  lot of work in this offseason and I feel right
• 7:40
  where I.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: Need to be.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: Important to note, it takes a little bit of time,
• 7:45
  and when you don't join the team until October and
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  you're already behind and learning the plays and you're still
• 7:51
  recovering from that knee and working through some things. I mean,
• 7:55
  context is really important here. This is obviously a big
• 7:58
  summer for Sydney Brown, but now that he's healthy, he
• 8:01
  has sort of a clean slate and he's able to
• 8:03
  kind of establish himself.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: To this coaching staff.
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  Speaker 2: We talk a lot about the wide receivers vying for
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  depth roles, and I think that while it's been Terrace Marshall,
• 8:15
  the veteran who's.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Gotten a lot of praise, it's today.
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  Speaker 2: I mean it was wide receiver Danny Gray, who I
• 8:22
  thought made a really nice play coming back to the
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  football on a pass middle of the field from Tanner McKee,
• 8:28
  preventing the football from hitting the ground in front of
• 8:31
  Tristan McCollum and Drew mccooba. And that, of course was
• 8:35
  on the heels of him making a nice play on
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  a crosser on Thursday from Kyle McCord, where it was
• 8:41
  a nice catch and run. You can see his explosiveness
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  after the catch. He got right upfield and sort of
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  tightrope that sideline. Danny Gray has explosive qualities and again
• 8:51
  one of the players that I'm really looking forward to
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  seeing in the preseason.
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  Speaker 1: I also thought that Anya Smith the Eagles second year
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  on wide receiver.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: He made my notebook for the second conxecutive practice because
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  you see the quickness and the shiftiness and he's clearly
• 9:07
  playing with more confidence. Here's probably the most fun for
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  me today at practice. It was the Mono imano special
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  teams drills where the Eagles had a row of about
• 9:21
  four different returners and they would go simultaneously, but you
• 9:25
  had the returner in front of the returner, you had
• 9:28
  the blocker, and then the player on the other side
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  of the blocker who was tasked with defeating the block
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  and getting to the returner.
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  Speaker 1: So I won't go through all of them. I jotted
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  down every rep, but we'll go through some of the
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  notable ones.
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  Speaker 2: The first was Avery Williams being the returner, Keey Ringo
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  being the blocker, and Eli Rix providing.
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  Speaker 1: You know, he was the coverage player.
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  Speaker 2: I'll give that one to Eli Rix because he squeezed
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  past keey Ringo in pursuit of Williams.
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  Speaker 1: Give the win there to Eli. This was a good
• 10:01
  one too.
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  Speaker 2: Saquon Barkley was the returner, Harrison Bryant was the blocker,
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  and jay loox Hunt was.
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  Speaker 1: Was the tackler.
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  Speaker 2: And Hunt easily gets past Bryan's to get to Barkley,
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  and then he jokingly lets the side where Saquon was,
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  where all the returners where.
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  Speaker 1: He lets them know about it. And that's something that
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  Jay looks on.
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  Speaker 2: If you go back to any of the conversations that
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  he and I or man Will have had Jay Loox,
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  I think it was Jay Looks and Van Sumer and
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  that no, it was Jay Looks and Will Ship. We
• 10:34
  that would constantly compete to get down field first.
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  Speaker 1: So it's a friendly.
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  Speaker 2: Competition, and Jay Loox Jayoks clearly got the better of
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  Harrison Bryant there. I don't think Brian even got a
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  got a hand on him. The best one was on
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  a play where Danny Gray was the returner, Van Sumer
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  Ben Van sumerm was the blocker. Jeremiah Trotter Junior was
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  the coverage guy. Van Sumern gets physical with Trotter and
• 11:00
  seals him off, much to the delight of his teammates.
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  Speaker 1: This in his line and.
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  Speaker 2: Sapon Barkley in particular was cheering him on in support
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  from across the field, you know, showing.
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  Speaker 1: Support to your fellow running back. I thought was kind
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  of cool to see it.
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  Speaker 2: Seems like Van Sumer is a favorite amongst his teammates.
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  He really gets after it, and it's apparent that, regardless
• 11:24
  of how minimal his opportunities may be at fullback, what
• 11:28
  he can bring in terms of special teams play that
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  can't be discounted because he's clearly a leader of that
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  unit and the probably the best player. I think I
• 11:37
  feel very comfortable saying he's the best player in that unit.
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  And I thought Kevin Patulo said something interesting. It was
• 11:43
  the last question of his session. He said, I don't
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  know if a lot of folks know how good of
• 11:48
  an athlete Ben is, and those who listen to this podcast,
• 11:51
  of course and read my work already know that. But
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  it was good to hear that and have that put
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  out there because when you watch him play, just a
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  very unique athlete with the skill set that I find
• 12:02
  to be very diverse. The last one was Anias Smith
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  as a returner, Lewis seen as the blocker, and Sidney
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  Brown as the coverage player. Seene was no match for
• 12:14
  Sidney Brown, who I've referred.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: To as the heat seeking missile.
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  Speaker 2: Brown did a nice job using his hands to disengage,
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  which is obviously key and then here's a fun one
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  because this is a player who's obviously very far down
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  in the pecking order and a long shot, of course,
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  But Elijah Cooks, the wide receiver who spent some time
• 12:34
  with the Jaguars, was on the Eagles practice squad last season.
• 12:38
  In the postseason, if you remember, I had the note
• 12:41
  that he actually was tasked with emulating Puka Nakua leading
• 12:45
  up to the Rams game while Kyle Phillips was Cooper
• 12:48
  cup Well. He had about three different catches that caught
• 12:52
  my attention. One was during an early team period when
• 12:56
  the Eagles were on split fields and Tanner McKee threw
• 12:59
  him an intermediate passed that he did well to Reelin
• 13:02
  and another one came later doing eleven on eleven's. But
• 13:06
  the final play came during a developmental period where it
• 13:09
  was a deep shot from Kyle McCord on a contested catch,
• 13:13
  Elijah Cooks down the left sideline reels it in despite
• 13:17
  tight covers from safety Andre sam That was a great
• 13:20
  way to end practice. And I think that he's a
• 13:23
  player that when you look at the preseason, he's just
• 13:26
  going to be fun to watch because he's rangy, he's
• 13:28
  about six to five or six six and he moves well,
• 13:32
  he kind of looks a little bit like Johnny Wilson,
• 13:35
  so make sure you could differentiate the eighty six and.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: The eighty nine.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: But yeah, that was today's practice. I thought there was
• 13:43
  a lot of good things to come out of it.
• 13:45
  And oh, I can't forget to mention Smile Mondon Junior,
• 13:49
  the Eagles rookie linebacker. There were no notable plays that
• 13:53
  he made, but I think that the physicality and the
• 13:56
  range and the athleticism really shined to me today and
• 14:00
  he made my notebook because you see the toughness in
• 14:04
  the tenacity and I said to myself, he is going
• 14:06
  to be a wrecking crew on special teams this year,
• 14:11
  and that's something that I feel very confident about. He
• 14:15
  played it at Georgia and you see the athleticism. He
• 14:18
  has the prototypical build of the new age NFL linebacker,
• 14:22
  and I just think that he's going to continue to
• 14:24
  get better the more reps that he gets. And he's
• 14:28
  just a very sharp minded football player that you can
• 14:31
  see he's dialed into the fundamentals.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: All right, Well, that's going to do it for this
• 14:36
  edition of the Czech o Daily.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: The Eagles are off tomorrow, but they are back on
• 14:39
  the practice field Monday morning. Monday and Tuesday are expected
• 14:45
  to be scorchers out there, so yeah, I mean the
• 14:49
  pads should be on relatively soon. I'm not sure whether
• 14:51
  that'll be Monday or Tuesday or later on during the week,
• 14:54
  but it should be another eventful week for the Philadelphia Eagles.
• 14:57
  And of course we will have you covered with all
• 14:59
  the things you need to know right here on insidethbirds
• 15:02
  dot com and right here on the Checko Daily.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: That'll do it for me. I'll catch you on the
• 15:07
  next one.