Barrett Brooks and Danny Pommells discuss Nick Sirianni’s status with the Eagles veterans as he prepares for his second year as a head coach in the NFL.
Nick Sirianni ran one of the lightest training camps in history last summer.
It just got lighter.
A big change in this year’s Eagles practice schedule is the addition of four walkthroughs that replace full practices over the next couple weeks.
Stay in the game with the latest updates on your beloved Philadelphia sports teams! Sign up here for our All Access Daily newsletter.
Because of the walkthroughs, the Eagles won’t hold full practices more than two days in a row at any point this summer.
“My job is to make sure the team is ready to play,” Sirianni said. “And so I have to listen to the experts. I have to listen to our doctors, I have to listen to our strength and performance staff and I have to listen to our trainers, but at the end of the day, I have to make sure the team’s ready to play.
“So it isn’t just blind faith, it’s educated how we’re doing these things and sometimes I have to make hard decisions on what to do and what not to do.”
Walkthroughs are no-pads practices generally held in shirts and helmets with players moving at half speed and an emphasis on teaching as opposed to physical reps.
NFL
The Eagles opened this summer’s camp Wednesday with a 58-minute ramp-up practice at the NovaCare Complex, and while most practices will be somewhat longer than that — usually 90-120 minutes — it’s an early sign of what we’re going to see over the next month.
Even more of an emphasis than last year on getting the work in and then getting the guys off their feet.
“It’s all about player health,” Sirianni said. “It’s all about how the numbers went down last year as far as the soft-tissue injuries. So our 3rd-day numbers tell us — not just on our team but throughout the league — that soft-tissue injuries shoot up that day, so that’s the reason for that. And that’s the same data that we’re following for the other three walkthroughs that we’re going to have.”
More: Eagles training camp observations — Red zone work on Day 1
During the training camp portion of the preseason, the Eagles will have nine practices at the NovaCare, one at the Linc, two in Cleveland and two in Miami. The schedule covering Aug. 13-17 — after the Jets preseason game and before joint practices in Cleveland — hasn’t been announced yet, but it will almost certainly follow the current pattern.
Sirianni did say that the walkthroughs will allow the Eagles to have longer and more intense practices on some days that last year were lighter. And he said the net amount of time the team spends on the field will actually be higher this year.
“Is it different from what we did last year? Yes. But the other thing you’re getting is more high-volume days because of that walkthrough,” he said. “We have a green day, a yellow day and a red day, so yes, we have a couple more walkthroughs than what we had, but there are more green days now, which means there’s more high-intensity practices, so the distances of how much we’re running is going to be higher in this camp than it was in last camp.
“It’s just a different way of how we get there. It doesn’t mean we won’t get soft-tissue injuries, there’s probably going to be some. But we’re doing as much as we possibly can to prevent those things.”
The players love it. Why wouldn’t they?
“We’ve got a great schedule,” Brandon Graham said. “Ted and those guys in the weight room have a really good system, and I feel like the coaches and the staff work well together and everybody is helping one another and trying to make sure we come out of this thing healthy.
“We’re trying to be the healthiest team in the league. How can we do that? When we gotta go, we go. When we rest, we rest. You can’t control it all, but I think they’re putting us in a great position to come out of this thing as healthy as we can.”
Darius Slay was asked after practice Wednesday what he thought about such a short practice.
He scowled.
“I don’t consider it short,” Slay said “We’re working. This game is about working hard but also you’ve got to protect our bodies. So soft-tissue issues come with a lot of running and our coaches and staff do a great job of taking care of our bodies.
“We were the least injured team last year and they’re trying to keep that going and that’s why we played good at the end of the year, because a lot of guys were healthy. Our best players were healthy.
“That’s what we need. You can’t win games if you’re not healthy.”
Subscribe to the Eagle Eye podcast
Apple Podcasts | Google Play | Spotify | Stitcher | Art19 | Watch on YouTube