The mantra: ‘Everything matters’
Pederson’s smooth minicamp ends with message on T-shirts
PHILADELPHIA — Coach Doug Pederson’s message to his Philadelphia Eagles at the end of Thursday’s minicamp was a complex one involving appreciation, well wishes for their extended break and a plea to get their minds ready for training camp, which opens on July 25. This was after cutting them loose following a session in the indoor facility that lasted just 20 minutes.
Pederson obviously had seen enough by then to check off all the boxes he had set up coming into the offseason camps.
The main objective of all the work they just completed was to ensure a smooth training camp by getting the newcomers acclimated to both the system they play and the tight culture that has been established in the locker room and checking on the progress of all their returnees.
All is good in those areas, as far as Pederson and his players are concerned.
“Our injured guys are healthier and our healthy guys are not injured,” he told the team’s website after dispatching his players. “Quite frankly, that’s the biggest takeaway. We wanted to get better as a football team and I think we’ve done that. We’ve incorporated the rookies and we’ve incorporated the free agents. My new coaches from last year are all settled in this
spring, and that’s another big step in this whole progression.
“So those are some of the highlights.”
The coach also had T-shirts made for his players with the words “everything matters.”
Simply because, Pederson said, everything does.
“Really anything we do in life matters,” he said. “You have choices and you have consequences with those choices, so the decisions that we make sometimes matter. So I feel like, as a football team, as coaches, as players, even personnel staff, support staff, everyone in the organization, everything we do matters, It matters to winning games or losing games on the football field.
“So [I] just want to keep kind of reiterating that point with our team and just getting them to understand that if we jump offsides in practice, we’re probably going to jump offsides in the game. If we don’t do the little things right in practice, we won’t do them in the game.”
One position group that needed to work on some changes was linebacker. With the Eagles’ previous starter in the middle, Jordan Hicks, lost to free agency, it left Nigel Bradham as the only linebacker who typically plays every snap, and he’s shut down until training camp with a thumb injury that has lingered from last season.
Bradham and Hicks were the two linebackers in the nickel formation, which the Eagles are in around 70 percent of the time.
Now it will be Bradham and … Zach Brown or Kamu Grugier-Hill or Nate Gerry or L.J. Fort or Paul Worrilow or … well, you get the idea.
“I think we’re actually way further along this year than we were in any other [year] at this time,” Grugier-Hill said. “So it’s going to be a good year for sure. I’m excited for training camp.”
Not as excited about the long vacation that started minutes after Thursday’s conversation, however.
“I’ve got a 3 o’clock flight,” he said. “I’m out.”
So are all his teammates. Some will hang in the area and come to the team facility to work out from time to time. But most will get away for a month or longer, and many will get together with quarterback Carson Wentz, who regularly hosts a pre-training camp funfest in North Dakota.
“Last year, he just had it for receivers,” running back Wendell Smallwood. “This year I think he’s going to have the running backs too.”
Before meeting with Wentz, though, Smallwood is committed to helping run defensive tackle Fletcher Cox’s summer football camp this month in Cox’s native Mississippi.
The camp he just participated in was productive, according to Pederson.
“I’m excited about what we did and what we have here,” Pederson said, “and I expect the players to treat these next six weeks professionally. It’s important that they get away. They know they need to come back here ready to go. Take this break, make the most of it and understand that when you come back, the regular season is right around the corner. That’s kind of the message you leave them with.
“I’m pleased with how the spring progressed. I think we became a better team. It’s a new game when training camp starts, as we know.”