THINKS THE EAGLES STOLE ONE
We still don't have a comprehensive list of the receivers in Arizona this week with Donovan McNabb, preparing for training camp, but DMac drops some names in his latest blog posting. We already knew Brian Dawkins was out there, which is nice from a leadership solidarity standpoint, but I don't expect Dawk to be catching a lot of balls from McNabb this year. (Maybe he wants to get his hands ready in case Brett Favre ends up playing somewhere, though.)
The offensive players mentioned are LJ Smith, Jason Avant, Hank Baskett and Lorenzo Booker. I was hoping to see DeSean Jackson's name, given that the second-round rookie missed much of the full-squad minicamp time with a hamstring injury and can't have a lot of timing with McNabb yet. Jackson's presence also would be reassuring from the standpoint of signaling that he probably will be on hand when camp opens for rookies and select vets up at Lehigh on Monday. Jackson and the other second-rounder, defensive tackle Trevor Laws, are the only unsigned Eagles rookies. Their status could be complicated by an NFL-NFLPA dispute detailed in the posting below.
I'm not surprised to see Booker out in Arizona. He not only looked sharp on the field this spring, he seemed to quickly grasp the nuances of the media, the city and the locker room. Hard to say anything definitive until they at least practice with pads on, but I see him playing a solid supporting role this season, as a receiver out of the backfield, in motion, or flanked wide.
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.
