IS PRACTICING OUR FREE THROWS
Eagles defensive end Chris Clemons scared teammates and coaches when trainers had trouble bringing down his his body temperature, after Clemons left the morning workout with dehydration symptoms. Clemons eventually left Lehigh's A. Haigh Cundey Varsity House, where the Eagles dress and train, in the back of a white-and-blue City of Bethlehem Emergency Medical Sevices ambulance, which arrived with lights and siren running a little after 11:10 a.m
.Eagles officials forbade photographers and TV cameramen from shooting footage of Clemons being loaded into the ambulance, which was not running its siren when it departed at 11:27 a.m., preceded by a black unmarked police car. Clemons seemed to be conscious and sitting up on a stretcher, hooked to an IV, as he entered the ambulance, though reporters were kept about 40 feet away, across a road from the entrance to the fieldhouse.
Eagles coach Andy Reid and team security director Butch Buchanico followed the ambulance in a white SUV.
It wasn't oppressively hot during the morning session of Eagles training camp -- officially, temperatures were in the low 80s, under bright sun -- but at least a few players seemed to experience cramps or dehydration, Clemons most dramatically.
Clemons left the field on a motorized cart, with a tan ice-filled cooling cap on his head. When the cart got to to doorway of the fieldhouse, Clemons needed a trainer under each shoulder to get into the building. Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb theorized that Clemons, 26, a free agent signee from the Raiders, was unaccustomed to the brisk pace of Eagles workouts.
"We're kind of adjusted to it," McNabb said at his scheduled news conference, minutes after Clemons was whisked away. "This is his first go-round."
McNabb said he knew little about the situation, beyond the fact that when McNabb came in from the field, Clemons was "just sitting there, they were throwing some cold rags on him."
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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