DeFilippo, Reich have faith in Eagles' QB plan

BY NOW, you might have picked up on the fact that those of us who cover the Eagles think this Sam Bradford-Carson Wentz-Chase Daniel quarterback mashup has the potential to become a bit of a circus.

John DeFilippo and Frank Reich say they are unfazed. They are the Eagles' quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator, respectively. They've logged time in QB rooms on both coasts and in between. They have seen the good, the bad and the dysfunctional.

DeFilippo, especially, knows from circuses: He was the offensive coordinator last season in Cleveland, where the game plan sometimes depended upon whether Johnny Manziel showed up partying somewhere on Instagram before Tuesday evening, when planning for that week's practice was complete.

"I've never heard the noise," DeFilippo said Wednesday. "I've had people ask me about it, but I'm trying to find the best ways to move the football."

DeFilippo, who played QB at Radnor High when his father, Gene, was Villanova's athletic director, seemed to be the guy in Cleveland who didn't want to give up on Manziel, telling reporters in late November that "there's no doubt in my mind that Johnny's going to bounce back." Manziel was released after the season and is unsigned. DeFilippo, who was not retained by new Browns coach Hue Jackson, said he hasn't spoken with Manziel since the season ended.

"I wish Johnny the best. I hope things work out for him," DeFilippo said, when asked whether he thinks Manziel will play in the NFL again. "Johnny and I, I felt like we had a good relationship when we were in Cleveland together. I wish him the best."

DeFilippo said that last year in Cleveland, or last month here, when Bradford left offseason training for two weeks while trying to get the Eagles to trade him, being wrapped up in the coaching bubble was a great preserver of sanity.

"You're so locked into the building and locked into your job, the goal . . . you don't hear the noise," DeFilippo said.

DeFilippo and Reich say the Eagles' plan can work - Bradford as the starter, never mind that he pretty much knows he has no future here beyond this season, Daniel the coach on the field and trusty backup, Wentz the future of the franchise, learning the QB job somehow without playing this season, unless calamity strikes.

Reich said he wasn't hinting at an accelerated time frame for Wentz, the second overall pick in the draft, or disagreeing with head coach Doug Pederson last week when he went on 94WIP and said it was "probably not" accurate to call Bradford the unquestioned starter.

"I said there's order - the order is, Sam's No. 1, Chase's No. 2 and Carson's No. 3. But you compete every day out of practice," Reich said Wednesday. "And that's the same - Jason Peters is the No. 1 left tackle, and so on and so forth . . . You compete every day."

In the Eagles' "dynamic" quarterback room, Reich said, "there's an understanding that the team is first, that we're trying to build a championship team, and everyone wants to contribute to that."

Reich's father, Frank, was a two-way lineman at Penn State and a successful high school coach in Lebanon, Pa.

"I remember growing up, my dad used to teach us, it's about contribution, not credit, you know?" Reich said. "It doesn't matter who gets the credit . . . Everybody wants to be the star. I get that. But you gotta have that mentality, right now, everybody is making a contribution to pushing each other, to making each other better, to making the team better."

DeFilippo acknowledged that although right now the quarterbacks are splitting practice reps pretty much equally, as is true for most NFL teams in the spring, there will come a time when preparing Bradford for games will take precedence. Wentz, if the plan holds, will become a rarity in the 21st-century NFL - a high-first-round QB who doesn't play as a rookie. But he won't just be sitting around, DeFilippo and Reich said.

"We're going to have a plan for him," as he did with Mark Sanchez as a Jets rookie in 2009, and Derek Carr as a Raiders rookie in 2014, DeFilippo said. "We've always had a plan, how to get those guys acclimated more. For example, working them out - if they're the (inactive) third-string quarterback, working them out individually for an hour before the game . . . Little things like that, Fridays, extra meeting time. Times when you can fit it in. The beauty of the NFL is there's an unlimited time they can be in this building during the season. You can meet with them as much as you want. We'll find that time."

But neither Sanchez nor Carr did anything like that - both started right away as rookies, Carr beating out Matt Schaub, who came into training camp No. 1. DeFilippo acknowledged that he hasn't been around a situation where the high-profile rookie QB did not end up starting. So there is a hint of the unknown, though for Reich and DeFilippo, the establishment of Bradford as the starter means less uncertainty in their overall planning, they said.

"The benefit of what we have is that the head coach stated very early who our starting quarterback is," DeFilippo said. "That kind of set the tone of what our mindset is in the quarterback room at this point. There's hierarchy in the quarterback room . . . Everyone's on board with the head coach's message . . . I think it's helped everybody, that he came out and said that . . . everyone knows where they're at, and I think everyone operates better when they know where they're at."

The key to working with a rookie QB, DeFilippo said, is "patience and detail."

"You've got to just fight through the growing pains and just hammer home the details over and over and over again, to the point where you think you sound like a broken record, but you're really not, to that player," he said.

Reich, the guy whose playing fame came from backing up Jim Kelly in Buffalo, returned to the theme of selflessness, when asked how the Bradford-Daniel-Wentz dance is going to work.

"These three guys that we've got in the room are winners . . . It oozes out of the meeting room. On the field, in drills, they're pushing each other," Reich said. "There's genuine camaraderie between the three of them, but there's also genuine competition between the three of them. We chart every throw.

"We all want (stardom) . . . we all inherently want that. But what I have found through the years is that the best teams win championships, and every team has a cumulative contribution, that mentality . . . The easiest way to get that happening is not so much coaching it into them, but it's who they are when they walk into the building, and then as coaches you cultivate that."

Handling not getting to play or having someone in the wings waiting to take your job is "just maturity," Reich said.

"That's what people don't understand - just because you've got a future Hall of Famer in front of you, or just because you've got a guy making 'X' dollars, or was chosen in this round, it doesn't matter. It doesn't change you. You've got that fire inside of you."

@LesBowen

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