IS GLAD SPRING TRAINING IS FINALLY HERE
Monday's Daily News will feature an interview with a guy several fans have e-mailed asking about, 2008 fourth-round corner Jack Ikegwuonu. Ikegwuonu missed the 2008 season after ACL surgery, but before that, off-the-field questions were complicating what once looked like a smooth path to stardom at Wisconsin.
Here are a few excerpts:
Ikegwuonu, now 23, is working out at NovaCare, anxious for Eagles minicamps to begin, anxious to begin proving
that he can still be the player he seemed on the verge of becoming early in his college career at Wisconsin.
The Eagles, who drafted Ikegwuonu in the fourth round last year despite ACL surgery and a pending court case that raised character questions for some teams, seem to have him penciled in as their “dime” corner. At least, they have for now, though they haven’t seen him on the field in a full-squad situation since they acquired him. The Birds traded Lito Sheppard to the Jets and have not moved to replace Sheppard in free agency, although with 12 picks in next month’s draft, they certainly could still add a corner or two.
“This organization has done enough for me; I need to start giving back,” Ikegwuonu said recently, a few days after getting the medical go-ahead to join offseason workouts with the team’s other 2008 rookies. “I completely feel that they expect me to play, expect me to be ready to play. I try not to read into what the team is doing – they know what they’re doing, they’re going to make their decisions based directly on my development. How hard I work is probably going to affect what they do. All I can do is worry about myself, worry about my knee, worry about the impression I’m making on the coaching staff.”
Ikegwuonu also addresses the questions about his character arising from a burglary arrest and a Facebook photo that seemed to show him sitting near a bong.
"Being the person that I am, being brought up the way I was brought up, things like that are very embarrassing to me," he said. "I would love to move forward … That’s not me, obviously; people who know me know those are things I don’t associate with … My nose is clean. If I was concerned about something like that, I would not be here, I would not be doing this organization justice.”
Les
Bowen has covered the Eagles for the Daily News
since 2002.
Before that, he spent nearly 13 years covering the Flyers. It took Les
only a few seasons after the switch to figure out that there was no
penalty box at the Linc, and that the time really wasn't his, despite
what Andy Reid kept saying. Les came to Philadelphia and the Daily News
from Charlotte in 1983. In the intervening years, he has pretty much
lost track of NASCAR, and his accent. He, his wife Barbara, and their
two sons live in Haddon Township, New Jersey.
E-mail Les at bowenl@phillynews.com
and follow
him on Twitter.
Paul
Domowitch has been with the Daily News since 1982.
He has spent most of his nearly 3 decades with the paper covering the
Eagles and pro football. For the last 10 years, he’s been a
selector for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. A native of Wilkes-Barre
and a graduate of Wilkes University, Domo started his career in Texas,
working first for the Midland Reporter-Telegram (1976-78), and then for
the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, where he covered some god-awful Texas
Ranger baseball teams. His first beat at the Daily News actually was
boxing, which he covered just long enough to lose 2 sports coats to
blood spatter before moving on to football. Domo and his wife Shelley,
a University of Oklahoma grad who still hasn’t gotten over
that Fiesta Bowl loss to Boise State 5 years ago, have 2 terrific
daughters -- Allison, 28, who is an attorney in South Jersey, and Amy,
25, who works in administration for a professional baseball team.
E-mail Domo at PDomo@aol.com and follow
him on Twitter.
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