Agholor unthreatened by Eagles' acquisition of Dorial Green-Beckham

NELSON AGHOLOR paused briefly to confer with Howie Roseman before speaking with a group of reporters after Tuesday's Eagles practice.

We don't know what Roseman said to the team's 2015 first-round draft choice.

"We still have faith in you"?

"Don't let these clowns bother you"?

Or maybe, "See what you've gone and made me do, I hope you're happy"?

The Eagles' trade for enigmatic wide receiver Dorial Green-Beckham was very much about Agholor. It also was about Rueben Randle and Josh Huff and Chris Givens, but it was more about Agholor, the guy Chip Kelly drafted in 2015 to replace Jeremy Maclin.

If Agholor was having the kind of breakthrough training camp the team hoped for, after a wandering mess of a rookie season, Roseman wouldn't be so eager to take a chance on an unharnessed, troubled talent such as Green-Beckham.

But Agholor doesn't seem to be in the middle of a renaissance. He stumbled through a miserable, no-catch preseason opener last Thursday against the Bucs, as did just about every Eagles wideout except undrafted rookie Paul Turner.

Is this move a challenge to Agholor, who, after all, was not a Roseman draft pick?

"I don't look at it as a message, I look at it as an opportunity for us to become a better football team," Agholor said. "They want the same thing I want, and that's to win football games and to be a great football team."

Agholor says he knows Green-Beckham from the draft process - Green-Beckham went 40th overall, in the second round, to Tennessee last year, when Agholor went 20th. They have the same agent group and both are adidas clients.

"I know him very well. I have a lot of respect for him," Agholor said. "I think he's a great football player. He's a competitor. He's a guy with a lot of talent, and he's going to help us out. He's a good person . . . We're very close."

Green-Beckham will accompany the Eagles to Pittsburgh for Thursday's preseason game, but won't play, coach Doug Pederson said. It's hard to project exactly how the new guy fits in, since he has no concept of Pederson's offense just yet.

"I'm going to make myself useful on the football field, regardless," Agholor said. "I come out here, I'm going to play hard, I'm going to have great speed, great effort, be detail-oriented, and make plays. At the end of the day, I'm going to be on this football team, and I'm going to help this team win football games."

Asked what he expected when camp began, Agholor said: "I thought I was going to continue to progress every day. I've progressed."

The 32 offensive snaps Agholor played in the preseason opener were draining, he said.

"I had minor details that I could polish when I got to watch that film. Especially in the run game, my assignments, I could have done a better job on. I felt my route-running could have been better. But it's good to put that on film and just see . . . I went out there focused to run good routes. As time went on, fatigue set in, I felt my routes skewed a little bit. So that's one thing I'm going to work on," he said.

Roseman, asked about Agholor, said: "I think Nelson, you see flashes of his ability. He's an explosive guy, he can create separation, and, again, I think it goes back to everyone, just on a day-to-day basis, wanting to see consistency. We have high expectations for Nelson. He has high expectations for himself."

Doug Pederson said he hopes to play his starters the whole first quarter at Pittsburgh Thursday and maybe "a series or two" in the second . . . Carson Wentz (ribs) will travel with the team but won't play, Pederson said. Pederson said he wants Wentz to be in on meetings . . . Also out are linebacker Mychal Kendricks (hamstring), cornerback Jalen Mills (hamstring), defensive tackle Mike Martin (knee), wide receiver Jordan Matthews (knee) and WR Hunter Sharp . . . Allen Barbre, who will start at right tackle Thursday, said fellow offensive lineman Dennis Kelly was getting ready for practice when he learned he'd been traded to Tennessee. Kelly later tweeted his thanks to the organization and the fans; he'd been here since 2012, when he was drafted in the fifth round . . . Pederson and Howie Roseman declined to address when they learned of right tackle Lane Johnson's possible pending suspension; Johnson said Monday he told the people "upstairs" on July 30.

@LesBowen

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