IS FEELING THE VALENTINE'S DAY LOVE
The most significant moment of the first morning of full-contact drills at Eagles' training camp was little-noticed by the Lehigh crowd. In a noncontact 7-on-7 drill just before 10 a.m., Asante Samuel limped off. Samuel and Eagles athletic trainer Rick Burkholder walked to the locker room.
Eagles coach Andy Reid said the Birds' $57 million free agent signee strained the opposite hamstring from the one that kept him out of the final week of minicamp work last month. "We'll just see how he does with that," Reid said.
Suddenly, Lito Sheppard didn't have to rotate in with the first-team defense; he was back at his old left corner spot.
"That's just until the man gets back healthy," Sheppard said
Samuel, who had been scheduled to appear in the news conference tent Saturday, canceled his appearance. Reid typically asks injured players not to detail their situations.
A hamstring injury is not earth-shattering, unless it lingers.
"Gingerly, but he was able to walk off. That's a good sign," free safety Brian Dawkins said.
Later, Samuel left the Lehigh locker room with no trace of a limp. In fact, he was able to climb into Sheppard's ginormous 4x4 pickup for the ride back to the dorms.
Fullback Luke Lawton and left tackle Tra Thomas left late in practice with cramps. Team president Joe Banner said nothing was new in the Shawn Andrews situation. The Eagles' starting right guard has not reported to camp. He was scheduled to meet today with agent Rich Moran.
"It is a personal situation," Banner said. "We want to respect his privacy."
Asked if Andrews is being fined, Banner said: "We'd like to keep that internal as well."
Banner said there are no meetings scheduled right now with Todd France, the new agent for Brian Westbrook.
Banner met before camp started with Drew Rosenhaus, new agent for Lito Sheppard, but the Eagles don't seem interested in trading Sheppard right now -- however slim those chances were, they got even slimmer when Samuel limped off -- or in redoing Sheppard's contract.
Both Westbbrook and Sheppard said this week that they expect movement in their situations -- Westbrook a new deal, Sheppard, presumably, a trade.
"I obviously hear it," Banner said, when asked about those remarks. "We have to do what we think is right and fair ... hopefully, it will overlap with what they think is right and fair."
Asked if he felt the Eagles have treated Westbrook and Sheppard fairly, Banner said: "Yes."
Did Westbrook and Sheppard help themselves with the Eagles by showing up on time?
"You do appreciate that they're doing the right thing," Banner said.. "There's certainly a psychological component to negotiating, and it helps for us to feel good about the way they're acting, hopefully, for them to feel we're acting in good faith -- that's definitely a positive."
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.
Download our iPhone/Android app for even more Birds coverage, including app-exclusive videos and analysis. Get it here for iPhone or here for Android.
 | Join on Facebook |
