Eagles' Denzel Rice the pride of Chanticleer nation

OVER THE holiday weekend, after Denzel Rice told his coaches back at Coastal Carolina he'd made the Eagles' 53-man roster, they announced it to the entire team, Rice said yesterday.

Though there are a handful of former Chanticleers in the NFL, Rice is the only one who made it as a rookie this year, and the only undrafted rookie, from any school, to make the Eagles.

"I have a lot of people back home rooting for me. I've gotten a lot of congratulations from Coastal," said Rice, a 6-foot, 196-pound corner, who grew up in Winston-Salem, N.C., and said he had never ventured as far north as Philadelphia before signing with the Eagles after the draft.

The Chanticleers, of Conway, S.C., are ranked first in the nation in the Football Championship Series coaches' poll. They will visit Monmouth this season, north of Philly, but most of their Big South Conference opponents are closer at hand - the Presbyterian Blue Hose, of Clinton, S.C., the Gardner-Webb Bulldogs, of Boiling Springs, N.C.

Rice was second-team all-conference last season, but that wasn't enough to wrangle him an invitation to the NFL Scouting Combine. Agent Joby Branion found out there was a regional combine being held in Baltimore, though, and he managed to get Rice into that, and Rice did well enough to be invited to the super-regional combine in Arizona. There, Rice talked to Eagles defensive coordinator Bill Davis and defensive backs coach Cory Undlin.

"I caught a couple eyes, a couple teams talked to me after Baltimore and Arizona. I was pretty confident" something would work out, Rice said.

Ultimately, although the Eagles had drafted three corners and signed three veteran free-agent corners, Rice decided to take his chances here. Bradley Fletcher and Cary Williams were out the door, and Brandon Boykin would soon follow, though Rice had no way of knowing that last part.

"I kind of trusted the coaches, because we built a great relationship with each other," Rice said. "That was the team that seemed the most interested in me. There was a trust factor. It came down to the trust factor . . . At the end of the draft, I kind of knew where I was going to go."

Once he got here, he wasn't overwhelmed.

Rice said Davis's scheme "was actually identical to what we did in college - we were a 'man' team. I played press-man in college every down."

There were adjustments, though.

"The speed is a lot different. People are a lot more athletic; you're getting quality reps every rep," Rice said. "I wasn't used to that in college."

Back in the spring, coaches talked about the "young corners" as a group they liked, including Rice with second-round pick Eric Rowe and sixth-rounders JaCorey Shepherd and Randall Evans. The three draftees all came from bigger, BCS programs - Utah, Kansas and Kansas State.

There's no avoiding the fact that if Shepherd, an early standout, hadn't suffered a season-ending ACL tear, Rice probably wouldn't have made the roster. It would seem to have come down to Rice vs. Evans, who ended up on the practice squad.

"We thought Denzel had a really good camp for us," Chip Kelly said when the roster was complete. "Actually, starting back in OTAs. He did a really nice job. I know myself, Cory and Billy feel really comfortable with Denzel. I think he has a bright future and we are excited about having him."

"Every chance I got, I tried to correct something," Rice said. "If I messed up, I went back and watched film and just tried to get better every time."

Was he confident, going into the final cutdown?

"I wouldn't say confident. I was more nervous than confident, honestly," he said. "I really didn't know where I stood."

Saturday, he was standing on a street corner in Center City when he got a call from his brother, Tremel White, back in North Carolina. The family, scouring the Internet, had found Kelly's press conference from a few hours earlier, in which he discussed the roster, and the fact that Rice was on it. This was how Rice found out he was an Eagle.

"They knew it. They were the ones who told me," Rice said.

Yesterday, the team gathered for meetings. Today, No. 35 will practice as a regular-season NFL player for the first time. After the meetings and the interview for this story yesterday, he was intent on taking another significant step: finding an apartment, so he could get out of the training-camp hotel.

Quarterback Matt Barkley met with reporters in Arizona yesterday for the first time since being traded from the Eagles to the Cardinals last Friday. The Eagles will get a seventh-round draft pick if Barkley is on the 53-man roster for at least six games.

"Surprised. No doubt about that," Barkley said, when asked his reaction to being dealt by the team that moved up to draft him in the fourth round in 2013. "My heart kind of sank when Chip called, just because I'd never faced that before. But once I kind of realized what was happening and the situation I was going to be in, I really could not be more excited to be here, to be with these guys, Carson and coach Arians. I think the organization, from top to bottom, really has it going on. And so I think it was a good changeup for me and where I was at in my career."

Barkley said the Cards' system is "like reading Chinese" for him at the moment, but he said it is more like what he did in high school and at USC than Kelly's offense, which Arians famously called "a college offense" two years ago, though he later said he was referring to the read option, not to the attack Kelly is using in the NFL.

Barkley seemed eager to earn brownie points there.

"The last few years have been a little simplified in terms of protections and how the quarterback would handle things," he said. "I'm excited to get back into that mind-set of a pro-style quarterback, and calling plays like that."

Tight end Andrew Gleichert is on the Eagles' practice squad in place of Chris Pantale, who was announced but apparently did not sign . . . ESPN's Adam Caplan reported a three-year contract extension for Andrew Gardner, who won the starting competition at right guard . . . ESPN's Field Yates reported that the Eagles worked out QBs Josh Johnson and Thad Lewis yesterday.

Blog: ph.ly/Eagletarian