MUST BE DREAMING: TEMPLE IS 9-2?
This has to be good news for Eagles fans: Rookie tight end Cornelius Ingram reports that his surgically repaired left knee has had no problems during his summer training.
Ingram tore the ACL in a preseason workout last August and missed Florida’s national championship season. He then slid to the fifth round in the NFL draft because of concerns about the injury. The Eagles grabbed Ingram with the 153rd overall pick and he was instantly hailed as one of the “steals” of the draft.
Ingram said he felt like he picked up the system pretty quickly during the minicamps and OTAs this spring.
“I’ve been catching on really good with the offense,” he said. “I’ve had the opportunity to be in there and get a lot of reps. My knee has been healthy the entire time. I’ve been getting better every day. I can see that I’m making strides and I feel real good about where I’m at right now.”
He also said that he made sure not to allow his fall in the draft to affect his attitude or performance once he landed with the Eagles. He easily could have come in with a chip on his shoulder and feeling like he had something to prove to the teams that passed him by. The Eagles signed him to a 4-year contract reportedly worth $1.9 million.
“I told myself that I wasn’t going to start off like that, because I feel like everything happens for a reason,” he said. “I don’t want to go out and put so much pressure on myself to do something that I wasn’t used to doing.
“My whole mindset was to be relaxed when I started my first camp and make sure I get better. I didn’t want to do something crazy like re-injuring my knee because I was trying to impress someone.”
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From the ex-Eagles file, the Jets have signed offensive lineman Nevin McCaskill, who was recently released by the Packers. Before signing with Green Bay, McCaskill did a stint on the Birds' practice squad.
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.
Paul Domowitch has been with the Daily News since 1982. He has spent most of his 27 years at 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 came to the Daily News from the Fort Worth (Tx.) Star-Telegram, where he covered some god-awful Texas Ranger baseball teams. His first beat at the Daily News actually wa s boxing, which he covered just long enough to lose two sports coats to blood spatter before moving on to football. Domo and his wife Shelley, a University of Oklahoma grad and very dangerous to be around following a Sooner loss, have been married 29 years and have raised 2 terrific daughters – Allison, 26, a lawyer and graduate of Boston University School of Law; and Amy, 23, who graduated from Clemson and works in marketing and sales for a professional baseball team.
