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Babin talks Reid, Eagles

There's certainly plenty of non-Eagles sports news (Flyers trade, Sixers draft, Oswalt injury) to keep everyone occupied today, but I'll provide some football chatter anyway.

Pro Football Focus recently did a Q&A with free agent to be Jason Babin.

And he had a couple interesting Eagles-related answers.

PFF's Steve Wyremski asked Babin if there is any bad blood between him and the Birds that would prevent him from coming back and reuniting with his defensive line coach, Jim Washburn:

"No, I think any and all feelings if they were bad could be waived by a healthy contract. There's one thing that Andy Reid said to me [that] I kind of laugh about now because of the success I had last year, but it's a story I like to tell.

It was the beginning of my first game as an Eagle and then there on the Jumbo Tron, ESPN or something was on and they were talking about defensive ends in the preseason. They were talking about me, "oh, the most productive defensive end in preseason…" and I'm standing on the field and I wasn't dressing for the game. Andy Reid walks by and he goes, "Hey! You got some coach that doesn't let the best defensive end in the preseason play." At the time, obviously you can imagine how you feel. I understand the situation and a little later understood his humor/personality and can laugh about it now.

I was paraphrasing there. I can't remember exactly what he said, but something along those lines."

Babin had 12.5 sacks (sixth in the NFL) last season in Tennessee, and having turned 31 last month, he'll be looking to cash in once teams are allowed to start bidding for his services.

Babin has spoken glowingly of Washburn since the moment the Eagles lured him away to coach their defensive line, and that continued in this interview:

"The thing about the defensive scheme we had last year with Washburn and Chuck Cecil is that they were really smart about what they did. A lot of defensive coaches say, "This is our defense, this is how were playing, and this is what we're doing exactly." Well, there's injuries, change in personnel, and different people so everything has to be curtailed to what you have to work with. Those guys did an amazing job of saying, "these are the tools we have and weapons we have … what's the best way we can use them." They don't have a cookie cutter scheme. They looked at what guys did well and let them excel at it."

Those comments could be viewed as a slight dig towards Sean McDermott and the Eagles' coaching staff, but Babin also previously had stints in Kansas City, Seattle and Houston where he didn't have success.

While with the Eagles in 2009, Babin had 2.5 sacks and appeared in 12 games. He was used primarily as a rotational pass rusher for McDermott.

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