Eagles LB Acho gets his chance to step up

The first thing Emmanuel Acho did, after he learned that DeMeco Ryans had ruptured an Achilles tendon last Sunday, was to assess what the injury meant for Emmanuel Acho. This was not at all a selfish thing for him to do. It was natural and practical and essential.

Since the start of the 2013 season, Ryans had played more than 1,700 snaps for the Eagles as one of their starting middle linebackers and as the man who best represented the defense's beating heart. Over the same period, according to the scouting and statistical firm Pro Football Focus, Acho has played 157 defensive snaps. Now, he and Casey Matthews would have to play in Ryans' place for the remainder of the season, beginning Monday night against the Carolina Panthers, and Acho understood that his daily routine would have to change immediately.

While Mychal Kendricks missed four games earlier this season with a calf injury, for instance, Acho estimated he watched 15 hours of game film a week so that the Eagles' defensive schemes and his role in them would become second nature to him. He had maintained that schedule even after Kendricks returned to the lineup.

"Now that Meco's down, it'll probably be around 20," Acho said last week after one practice. "You probably put in three or four a day. It's mainly at night. You get home around 6 o'clock. You throw on different game tapes, different cutups. Even if you have TV playing in the background, you can still watch some tape, take notes of it, figure out how to break things down. You don't want to watch game tape as a comedy or a mystery. You want to watch it and get something out of it.

"Now that the load increases, the study has to increase. So thankfully, it's a Monday night game, so I've got an extra day. I've already gotten ahead. I've already watched their two previous games. I've already watched their entire run tape, the entire run cutup, because now I have to know what's going on. It's not, 'Well, if DeMeco goes down, I might have to play.' DeMeco's down, and it's now my job to step in there and know exactly what to do."

Studying is hardly a chore to Acho, who turns 24 on Monday. Having already earned a degree in sports management from the University of Texas, he is pursuing a master's in sports psychology, his interest in the field a by-product of his upbringing: His father, Sonny, is a psychologist.

That it's his job to call the defensive signals on first and second downs in Ryans' absence, then, isn't much of a burden for him. Early last week, Acho said, Eagles defensive coordinator Bill Davis acknowledged in a meeting that Acho knew the defense "just as well - if not better - than anybody else, just because I pride myself on my intellect and my ability to go out there and make calls. I'm not worried about any of that stuff. It just comes down to getting the repetitions."

That's always been the issue for Acho over his professional career, even within Chip Kelly's souped-up practice system, which allows the Eagles' backups to get more reps than many teams' starters do. His place on an NFL roster has never been so secure. After the Cleveland Browns selected Acho in the sixth round of the 2012 draft, a knee injury the following August ended his rookie season before it began. In April 2013, the Browns traded him to the Eagles for running back Dion Lewis, and the Eagles released him on Sept. 2 of that year, exactly one week before their regular-season opener.

The New York Giants then signed Acho to their practice squad on Sept. 9, and he stayed there for six weeks until the Eagles signed him again and added him to their 53-man roster. He saw those 157 snaps for them before they sent him back to the practice squad on Dec. 17. They decided to keep him there after training camp this year, then promoted him back to the 53-man roster two days after their Week 1 victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Acho's background, really, is the antithesis of Ryans'. Since entering the NFL in 2006, Ryans has appeared in 126 games, starting every one of them. The only developments that have forced Ryans off the field over those nine seasons, in fact, were two torn Achilles tendons: his left in 2010, his right last week.

It's too much to expect Acho to replicate everything Ryans does and means to the Eagles' defense, so Davis has simplified things instead.

"We've got small boxes for everybody, and that's kind of the way we've had success in replacing guys," Davis said. "Ask a couple to do a small part and really master that small part."

No one's ever asked anything bigger of Emmanuel Acho.