Pictures at an Exhibition...flash impressions of Day 2 at Eagles TC...

Apologies to classic composer Modest Mussorgsky and the band Emerson, Lake and Palmer...  but I stole their theme to justify posting these random photos of recent action at Eagles' training camp:


Andy Reid oversees practice in the afternoon at Lehigh... I like the new Hulk Hogan look... Andy's down to about 260...


Howard Mudd (OL coach) is back with a new and improved Mudd-Mobile... what's the rear cargo section for, body parts?


A rarity...4 QB's taking part in a slo-mo 3-Step Drop Drill at the same time... From left to right, Trent Edwards, Mike Vick, Mike Kafka and Nick Foles...


Stephanie Stradley, of the Houston Texans coverage team for the Houston Chronicle, gives us a little JB-style perspective on the TC reporting experience...

But first, some quick impressions of yesterday's Eagles' camp:

Conditioning is key: Defensive tackle Fletcher Cox was one of many rookie linemen who appeared gassed after the first live afternoon session. Nerves could have been playing a part too. Suffice to say, he and his teammates won't be breathing that heavily by the end of camp.

RB depth encouraging: Running backs coach Ted Williams has been pleased with what he's seen so far from rookies Chris Polk and Bryce Brown, who are vying to be LeSean McCoy's primary backup. "I'm really impressed with both of them because they work hard and they appear to be intelligent enough to master this offense, which is really the biggest problem you get with kids coming into this offense," Williams said. "It's a mouthful. You put a plate in front of them and it's a whole meal. They've got to know how to take which bites to digest it. But they have shown me that they can handle it. I'd say the best thing about them is they have extraordinary skills, both of them do."

The Eagles worked out former NFL punters Jason Baker, Chris Bryan, Brad Maynard and Mat McBriar, a sign that they were not thrilled with Chas Henry's rookie performance last season.

Free-agent tight end Visanthe Shiancoe is expected to visit today.

First-round draft pick Fletcher Cox took reps at both defensive tackle and defensive end. He is expected to replace defensive tackle Mike Patterson in the starting lineup. Patterson will miss the entire training camp after undergoing offseason brain surgery in January.

Rookies and selected veterans will stage a walkthrough at 8:30 a.m. and a practice at 3:30 p.m. at Lehigh today. The rest of the team is scheduled to report to Lehigh on Wednesday with the first full practice slated for 2:45 p.m. Friday. ... Eagles defensive end Trent Cole revealed on Twitter that he received two speeding tickets totaling $348 in a two-minute span on his way to catch a plane to Philadelphia.

To gain perspective on this whole TC media circus where you're not sure if you're seeing anything meaningful at all in the first few days (such as the highly overblown reporting of Cliff Harris intercepting two ducks thrown by Trent Edwards in a drill yesterday), I turned to my old friend, Stephanie Bradley, who now reports on the Houston Texans for the Houston Chronicle...

Stephanie puts this early-preseason coverage in perspective:

"Do you watch the Science Channel show, “How It’s Made?”  Training camp is here, and I thought I’d give you a sense of how your Eagles' training camp news is collected. I like seeing behind the scenes stuff, and it’s not like much is going on..."

"The NFL has natural pull between fans wanting to know as much information as possible, with no detail too small, and you have the coaches not wanting to give up any secrets that can put them at a competitive disadvantage..."

Here's the INSIDE EDITION REPORT ON EAGLES COVERAGE and NFL coverage of training camps in general from Stephanie:

Media Rules...

For the people receiving media credentials, there are rules as to what is allowed to be reported--- and what is not--- to try to balance those competing interests. Some of those rules are standardized throughout the league, and some of those rules differ from team to team.

Video. Not sure if it is still the rule, but the NFL had rules restricting how much video of training camp you could show on non-NFL sites, and how long you could host it on your website. Due to this rule, I have very little incentive to shoot any video at all, because by the time I edit it and put it on the site, I have to take it down pretty quickly. I’m talking about all video, including video interviews with players. If I do an audio interview, I can host it as long as I want.

Plays. Though you can report about generalized things you are seeing, you aren’t supposed to write about details of formations, or repetitions counts of particular players. It’s a judgment call where you draw the line, but generally they don’t want you reporting things that could give opponents a benefit...i.e, how many reps did they give Riley Cooper at yesterday's WR practice compared to Marvin McNutt's...

Twitter. In closed practices, they don’t want you to use Twitter. Some teams are not like that, but the Eagles are... In particular, they don’t want media reporting to large audiences things like injuries before having a coach talk about them. A quick 140 characters can be very misleading, and alarming, especially as something is happening that other people can’t see.

Logistics...

Most days a collection of local print, radio and TV media folks come to practice. The still/video cameras are only allowed to record the warm-up/drill portions of practices--- but are turned off during the team portion of practice.

Near the end of practice, the Texans' PR asks you if you want to talk to a particular player/coach.  If so, they will pull that guy if he is available.  Otherwise, it is a media scrum after practice. Media folks grab different guys to talk to before they walk off the field. Eventually, head coach Gary Kubiak is available and usually answers the standard questions first: 1. How was that practice?; 2. Injuries of note...

Sometimes you can tell when coach is unhappy/happy with a practice  by just watching practice, sometimes not.

Then media starts asking questions that may be relevant to something they saw, relevant to something they were wondering about, relevant to a story they’ve been assigned to write. So sometimes the players that Kubiak mentions aren’t ones that he particularly was paying attention to, but rather ones that the media brought up in questioning. Other times, in response to an open-ended question, Kubiak will bring up a player that he wants to highlight as doing exceptional things. Sometimes you see things on the field that make you question the answers you are getting. Sometimes what Kubiak says completely confirms what you are thinking. [TJ's note--- sounds a bit like Coach Reid, no?]

If you’ve been to an open practice, you know there’s a lot of stuff going on that makes it hard for any one person to see everything. They have cameras up on lifts to capture the entire practice. So sometimes, a media member here or there might see something that flashes positive/negative enough to write a note on, but sometimes that overemphasizes something that may not been a big deal in the scope of the entire practice--- or that a player got the right result for doing the wrong thing, or vice versa.

After practice, those reporters on deadlines typically go to the media center to write their stories.

Texans staffers who do work on their website also ask questions at practice. In addition, they’ve also been doing live feeds from practices that fans can watch from home. They don’t show the non-video parts of practice, and the video sometimes has a "Blair Witch Project" feel to them, but it’s great for fans who can’t go to the open practices.

I’ve followed the Texans closely since their beginning, and have written about the team since 2006, and it is amazing the transformation of how NFL teams are now covered. Hard to picture what that will look like in the future....

Transcripts...

The Texans in recent years have various staff members recording media interviews happening around the field. So do the Eagles. They don’t record all the questioning, but they get a remarkable amount given all the media at practice. Then they transcribe that material and post it on their website.

Sometimes, you can request an interview that you want as a private one without the media scrum around you. Transcripts are a good news/bad news thing.

The good news with transcripts is that on the web there is infinite space. So you can read an entire quote of what is interesting to you, and not just an excerpt that fits into a story with space limitations, or the thing that was interesting to the author. There’s immediacy of getting the quotes soon after practice, because no news can be enough or fast enough for good fans.

The bad news with transcripts is that it makes it more difficult to finance the news. If people can write stories based on transcripts, then why pay someone to be there? Who finances the experienced people who can be there and ask good questions? I know sometimes people can be grumbly about Texans  (or Eagles) coverage, but if you don’t pay for newspapers and support local TV and radio stations, at some point down the road, maybe the only news you may get is the version the teams choose to give you. (Which in the Texans' case is very, very good, but it is still the Texans’ view).

In addition, the transcript version of camp isn’t the complete one. And often, I read national reports of training camp taken from transcripts that miss key meaning because the reporters weren’t there to actually see what happened. Perhaps they make a bigger deal of something than the way it was meant.

An example... During minicamp, the Texans' players had a bad day. It was the hottest day in camp. Kubiak said unhappy things. Read some national reports that made this into some Big Deal, but just about every camp has some up and down days. If you weren’t there to see/feel hot-hot, still it was, and if you didn’t follow the Texans regularly, you wouldn’t know the context...Just an inconsequential example, but more things happen like that every day.

In total, transcripts are a positive thing for fans and national media, but recognize--- there’s stuff missing from them.

Over-Reaction Parsing...

The best news is that, unlike this meta-blog post, real training camp news will be coming up shortly. And with open camps, and more eyeballs, it means more information than before. I give you the advice that players live by–-try not to get too high, or too low after reports from one particular day.

Sometimes people parse the few words that come out of camp and read too much out of them. If a player has a bad day, he’s a bust, and if a player has a good day, he’s a sleeper who’s going to have a break out season...

This is understandable. For fantasy football players, this becomes an art, because fantasy teams are picked early and those players who get the right info out of camp can win their whole league based on good information. (Such as knowing that the Texans weren’t kidding when they said Arian Foster was the man coming out of camp his 2nd year).

Have any questions I missed? I like knowing stuff like this, because it makes things seem more real, tangible. Sort of like touring Reliant Stadium makes it easier to picture what it is like when the players are on the field.

Thank you, Stephanie, for that reality check on what news we'll be getting in the next few days and weeks out of Eagles TC...