Paul Domowitch: Is Shipley ready to be center of attention for Eagles?

WHEN THE EAGLES open the season at the Linc in 4 1/2 months against the Green Bay Packers and their 3-4 defense, somebody is going to be playing center for them. We just don't know who, and probably won't for a while.

Unless he's a really, really quick healer, it isn't likely to be Jamaal Jackson, who has started 63 of the Eagles' last 64 regular-season games, but is recovering from surgery to repair the ACL he tore in late December. He isn't participating in this week's minicamp, won't be participating in any of the team's other spring camps, and is doubtful for training camp and the preseason as well.

It might be Nick Cole or Mike McGlynn, who split the first-team snaps at yesterday's first minicamp practice. Cole, who started 15 games at right guard last season, slid over to center for the Eagles' two season-ending losses to the Cowboys. Let's just say things went a lot better for him at guard than center and leave it at that.

McGlynn? Who knows? The 2008 fourth-round draft pick was activated for just one regular-season game and never left the sideline for that one.

Dallas Reynolds? He spent most of last season on the practice squad, but went to BYU, which always is a good place to be from when Andy Reid is your coach.

It definitely won't be anybody the Eagles got in the draft because, well, none of their 150 selections were offensive linemen, let alone centers.

When asked 4 weeks ago at the league meetings if the Eagles would miss Jackson if he's not ready to go in Week 1, Reid said, "It looked that way in the last Dallas game."

That hardly sounded like a guy who is eager to put Cole out there across the line from Packers nose tackle Ryan Pickett on Sept. 12. But Reid said yesterday, "Nick is the starting center as long as Jamaal is not in there."

He also said, "We've got to find out about McGlynn, got to find out about Reynolds. So that's what we're doing. We're just giving them as many opportunities as we can."

There also is another option at center that Reid didn't mention yesterday. A guy who could move up the depth chart this summer when the Eagles finally put on pads and start to hit each other.

A.Q. Shipley.

Shipley, a former All-American center at Penn State, signed with the Eagles in mid-January after spending the '09 season on the Steelers' practice squad. At 6-1, and lacking the long arms teams prefer in offensive linemen, he doesn't quite fit the Eagles' mold for a center. But then again, neither does Cole, who is listed as 6-0, but actually is somewhere between 5-9 and 5-10.

Shipley won the Rimington Trophy as college football's top center in '08. But the height thing and the short-arms thing were double whammies for him in the '09 draft. The Steelers didn't take him until the seventh round.

Pittsburgh turned out to be a pretty good place for Shipley to spend his rookie year, though, even if practice-squad money isn't as good as 53-man roster money. In a league that has seen 14 teams go 3-4 defensive schemes, Shipley got a chance to get daily work against one of the league's very best nose tackles, Casey Hampton.

"I felt really comfortable last year practicing against it," he said of the Steelers" 3-4. "Especially going up against Casey every day, and those linebackers there. You're going to get used to it. You're going to get familiar with it. At the end of the year, I felt pretty comfortable blocking that 3-4 and going up against guys of that caliber."

Six of the Eagles' 16 games this season will be against teams with 3-4 schemes, including four in their division - two against the Cowboys and their Pro Bowl nose tackle Jay Ratliff, and two against the Redskins. Three of their first five games will be against 3-4 teams.

After last season ended, several teams called Shipley's agent about signing him. He picked the Eagles because of Jackson's knee injury.

"It's unfortunate what's happened to Jamaal," he said. "But it gives me an opportunity to come in and get some reps."

Again, Shipley doesn't fit the Eagles' mold for a center. He's more of a zone center, and that's not really what they do. It remains to be seen whether he can snap and play with leverage and get under some of the league's massive nose tackles. It remains to be seen whether or not he can anchor.

"I think he can be a starting center in the NFL," said the NFL Network's Mike Mayock. "The Eagles like the big guys. He's more of an intelligent, scrappy, short-armed, smaller, undersized guy. But with an offensive line like the Eagles that has so much movement and people playing different positions, I think they need a guy in the middle who takes charge. And I think Shipley is that kind of guy.

"He's a battler. He's tough as nails. If the Eagles give him a chance, I think they'll have trouble getting him out of the lineup."

Shipley said offensive line coach Juan Castillo teaches different blocking techniques than he used in Pittsburgh and at Penn State, but said he's slowly getting comfortable with them.

"I just want to play well and keep impressing them," he said. "I enjoy the zone [blocking] scheme for the running part of it. And the pass scheme is very similar to what I ran at Penn State. So I'm very comfortable with the situation."

Shipley said he doesn't feel his short arms put him at a disadvantage as far as being a successful NFL center.

"I kind of laugh at the whole short-arms thing," he said. "It didn't affect me in college and I don't think it affects me now. I've just got to play with what God gave me. And this is what God gave me." *

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