AFTERNOON PRACTICE
Indoor special teams practice. Riveting, I know. I'll (Joe) run down some of the highlights and quirks from the session.
Head athletic trainer Rick Burkholder is working on P90X with some injured players, and kicker Richmond McGee works his way over and gets involved. Everyone, especially Frantz Hardy, looks like they are having a good time with the kickboxing workout.
No weather can sway nor disaster can shake the rock-solid, the unflappable, the legendary Eagle Joe Brown. He's here, wandering through the building and watching practice. He stops and says hi to members of the PR department and media on the way.
The young offensive linemen are out of luck on special teams day. Juan Castillo is working them hard.
Wide receiver coach David Culley, as he tends to do, provided some of the more interesting tidbits from practice. First, he pulls DeSean Jackson aside and works on his fair-catch calling, and helping him to learn when to just get away from a punt gone awry. Next, Culley has Jackson and Jamal Jones lying on their stomachs as he throws the ball into the air. Their job? To get to their feet as quickly as possible and locate the ball in the air to make a play on it. Good for concentration.
MORNING PRACTICE
Got to run. The storm has come and lightning strikes. The players all sprint indoors immediately. They all kind of seem happy about it. Reporters still need to write a story for the day though so they hang around in the tent waiting for someone to speak. Asante Samuel, Donovan Mcnabb, and Brian Dawkins were supposed to have press conferences but they were cancelled. Defensive coordinator Jim Johnson was the only person to speak ...briefly before the rain pours into the tent. Special teams practice in the afternoon? We'll see. One more day, just one more day of training camp.
Gloomy, hazy, foggy day here at Lehigh. It can't be much more than 50 degrees out here this morning. When's the last time someone could say he was legitimately cold at training camp? The sun is pretty much nowhere to be found, and the storm clouds are supposed to be moving in for a late morning/early afternoon thunderstorm. Some of the beat reporters and I were discussing Sunday how incredibly mild the weather has been for the entirety of camp.
On the injury front, it doesn't seem as if Tra Thomas has returned from his back spasms yet. Stefan Rodgers (concussion), Sav Rocca (knee inflammation) and Reggie Brown (Achilles) are all back. Brodrick Bunkley has yet to return from an excused personal absence. Andy Reid said on Sunday that he should be back soon.
A lot of nickel packages are being installed for the defense here. No surprises – Asante Samuel and Lito Sheppard outside with Sheldon Brown inside.
Here's another Harold Carmichael observation I've (Joe) made. During group installs and team drills, he places the ball on the different hash marks, calling out the position as he does it. The funny thing is, he says ""RIGHT HASH"" with much more vigor than ""left hash"" or ""middle."" Our multimedia guru, Ryan McCann, and I thought for the longest time that he was saying 'GREAT PASS"" or 'GREAT CATCH."" We kind of debunked this when a pretty poor pass was thrown, and was subsequently dropped a couple days ago.
