IS GONNA GOOSE THE MAVERICKS
With Todd Herremans set to return to his starting role at left guard, Nick Cole will switch to the right side, Cole 
confirmed Friday afternoon.
Cole started the first five games of the season for Herremans, who underwent foot surgery Aug. 28. Lately, Max Jean-Gilles has been starting on the right side, with free agent signee Stacy Andrews apparently not completely recovered from offseason ACL surgery. Jean-Gilles had a fairly miserable day last Sunday at Oakland, when the Birds gave up six sacks, much of that pressure coming up the middle.
"I just have to change my sets up a little bit. It's cool," Cole said following Friday's practice for Monday night's visit to the Washington Redskins.
Cole started at right guard last season for the final five regular season games and all three postseason contests.
Earlier, offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg said his unit has "a lot of things to get accomplished" to be better Monday night against a Redskins defense that he feels is better than the one that held the Birds without a touchdown last Sunday at Oakland.
Mornhinweg said Herremans feels he can play the whole game, but Mornhinweg cautioned that the Birds have "some pretty good nicks," elsewhere along the line, including a knee injury that hasn't kept Cole from practicing. Left tackle Jason Peters is practicing with knee and ankle sprains suffered last week.
"There are several things that could happen there" if Peters is limited, Mornhinweg said, including Herremans sliding over to tackle.
Defensive coordinator Sean McDermott said this being the first game with Redskins offensive consultant Sherman Lewis calling plays is "a different challenge, an added dimension." Mornhinweg and head coach Andy Reid have worked with Lewis before, and McDermott said he had talked to them about what to expect. Presumably, there's a limit to how much of Washington's offense Lewis can change in a week.
McDermott reiterated that new middle linebacker Will Witherspoon will start and call the signals. He acknowledged he didn't know if that had ever been done, less than a week after joining a team, in midseason. McDermott said he saw Witherspoon as a "three down" linebacker, but he also said Jeremiah Trotter's role would not change.
That will be something to keep any eye on -- the previous plan had been to play Trotter on "running downs," but when Oakland turned a "running down" into an 86-yard touchdown-passing down to tight end Zach Miller, covered by Trotter, the former Pro Bowler seemed to pretty much disappear from everything but the shortest of short-yardage situations, until Omar Gaither suffered a Lisfranc sprain late in the game.
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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