Eagles Notebook: Eagles' Mychal Kendricks gets 4-year deal

APPARENTLY, not only can we write Mychal Kendricks' name in ink, we won't have to cross it out any time soon.

"Mychal Kendricks is not going anywhere. You can write that down in ink, not pencil. He's not going anywhere," Chip Kelly told us as training camp opened, three weeks or so back.

There'd been speculation, with Kiko Alonso coming from Buffalo in the LeSean McCoy trade, and DeMeco Ryans getting a new deal this spring, that Kendricks might be traded. His rookie contract would be up at the end of this season. Maybe at 6-foot, 240, he didn't have the size Kelly and Bill Davis covet at inside linebacker.

"I don't care. I'm a baller, and I feel the Eagles don't care, either," Kendricks said last night, when asked by the Eagles' website about how he fits the team's size parameters. "They know I'm a baller, too."

Kendricks sat out an optional OTA, which he said was so he could help his brother, Eric, get ready for the draft. (Eric, like Mychal, ended up going in the second round, to Minnesota.)

That was why Kelly had to make such an emphatic statement about Kendricks' 2015 status. Yesterday, the Eagles backed the coach's words with a four-year contract extension, through 2019, that an NFL source said contains $29 million worth of new money - $7.25 million a year from 2016-19. The guarantee is a little over $16 million, the source said, which is in the top five guarantees given to inside linebackers.

Kendricks, 24, has been slowed by a hamstring injury in this training camp but is back practicing. Ryans, meanwhile, has not played while rehabbing a repaired Achilles'. It isn't clear that Ryans will be his old self by the Sept. 14 season opener.

The Eagles have picked up the fifth-year option on defensive lineman Fletcher Cox, so really, quarterback Sam Bradford is the only bit of significant remaining contract business left to address, though a long-term deal with Cox would be a good thing. They can franchise Bradford if there's no agreement after his rookie contract expires following this season.

Kiko Alonso hopes to make his long-awaited Eagles debut Saturday at Green Bay, in the team's third preseason game, he said yesterday. "My goal is to play," said Alonso, who missed two weeks of training camp with a concussion suffered in a public practice at Lincoln Financial Field.

Concussions are a troublesome issue, but even though this was his first, Alonso said it was "like any other injury; I missed some time, which is unfortunate, but I feel great now. A little scary, just in the sense that it was kind of lingering, but football is a violent sport."

Alonso mentioned that the recovery took longer than he'd expected. Chip Kelly gave the impression that Alonso was fine soon afterward, but that Kelly was holding him back from completing the NFL concussion protocol to be cautious.

Alonso said he "got a little too excited" and put his head down on a collision with rookie offensive lineman Malcolm Bunche. Bunche, listed at 6-6, 320, might have the most impressive physique of any Eagles o-lineman. "I'll probably not use my head the next time I hit him," Alonso said. Bunche said he was pulling and Alonso was "my point guy . . . We looked at each other and I lowered my shoulder and kept running."

Alonso, 6-3, 238, was the NFL's defensive rookie of the year in 2013, before missing 2014 because of an ACL tear. He said he thinks he knows the defense well enough that starting the season with just one preseason outing under his belt won't be a problem. Typically, established players are held out of the final preseason game.

The Eagles signed safety Brandan Bishop to take the place of Earl Wolff, released with an injury settlement. Bishop, on the Falcons' practice squad last season, not only played four years with Wolff at North Carolina State, he was given Wolff's No. 28 jersey with the Eagles. "I had a chance to go over to his house - his mom was here, she made us a good home-cooked meal," Bishop (6-1, 205) said. "He said it's not that complicated a scheme. He said I'll be all right. I'm going to try to learn as fast as I can" . . . Defensive lineman Wade Keliikipi was waived/injured with a Lisfranc sprain in his right foot. The team was awarded defensive lineman Jeremy Towns (6-4, 290) off waivers from the Bills . . . The way Chip Kelly talked yesterday about not having been able to see enough from Marcus Smith, it seems unclear that the Eagles' hamstrung 2014 first-round pick will make the final roster.

Blog: ph.ly/Eagletarian