Observations: Eagles go down; who filled in?

The Eagles had four players leave practice Friday afternoon: Mike Bell, Max Jean-Gilles, Asante Samuel and A.Q. Shipley.

The team announced afterwards that Bell and Samuel suffered hamstring injuries, although the extent is unknown. Jean-Gilles was dehydrated. And Shipley hurt his ankle.

That meant the coaching staff had to do some shuffling, and we got to see which backups filled in where. Here are those obsevations and others from the afternoon practice:

* At cornerback, Dimitri Patterson stepped in opposite Ellis Hobbs. If Samuel were to go down for any extended period of time, this 'D' would be in big trouble. At left guard, it was Mike McGlynn running with the first team in place of Jean-Gilles. Keep in mind that Jean-Gilles was only in there because Todd Herremans is out. McGlynn had been lining up at center with the second team. Shipley took his place there. At running back, it seemed to be a rotation. I saw J.J. Arrington and Eldra Buckley both get reps after Bell went down.

* Funny moment early on in practice. With a light rain falling, Jeremy Maclin ran his route to the near sideline but had to hold up with the Kevin Kolb pass thrown a little behind him. Maclin adjusted, caught the ball, but then fall on his backside. He got back up laughing and ran up field like the receivers are supposed to. Andy Reid stared at Maclin, one of the team's best athletes, for a good 10 seconds, just saying "Wow" three times in a row.

* Akeem Jordan was still the first-team strong-side linebacker. In the nickel, it was Ernie Sims and Omar Gaither. Rookie Keenan Clayton and Jordan were the second-team nickel LBs

* I'm anxious to see how Kolb reacts this season when pressured. Even last year, Donovan McNabb showed he had the strength to escape pressure and find receivers downfield. I don't anticipate Kolb doing the same thing. He's more likely to make a quick decision than fight off defenders and extend a play. Can Kolb be accurate and make the right decisions when there's not a lot of time? We see a little bit of that when the Eagles run their blitzing drills in the afternoons, but we won't know the real answer until the games start.

* Jason Peters, who led the team with 11 penalties for 78 yards last season, was called for a false start.

* Kolb and Brent Celek just missed on a deep ball down the middle. Kolb and Jeremy Maclin too. Celek was the last player on the field after practice, getting in some extra work with rookie quarterback Mike Kafka.

* Michael Vick connected with Cornelius Ingram for a 15-yard gain. Reid gave Ingram props for the route and the catch as he came back to the line of scrimmage.

* Riley Cooper seems to make a couple plays every day. Today he caught a bomb from Kafka down the near sideline with David Pender covering. I was standing right next to members of the Eagles' first-team secondary, who are getting tired of the 6-3 Cooper pushing off. Ellis Hobbs, who mixed it up with Cooper yesterday, asked a nearby cameraman if he caught the push-off on tape, and then told us to go back and watch last year's LSU-Florida game where Cooper did the same thing.

* After practice, Trevard Lindley got in some extra work with DBs coach Dick Jauron. All the DBs ran through a drill involving tennis balls. Jauron or another assistant would sit down about 5 feet from two DBs and continuously toss tennis balls their way as they batted them down, presumably working on reacting, hands and quickness.

* Earlier today, I wrote about Brandon Graham, Winston Justice and other observations from the morning session.

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