The unmistakable impression: Glory boys such as Owens are fit; trench warriors such as Fraley are fat.
They are, to be sure, big boys. All the Eagles' offensive linemen weigh 300 pounds plus. These are men who completely fill a doorway and pack a tremendous amount of muscle and fat on their massive frames. You won't see Fraley or Tra Thomas or Jon Runyan or Jermane Mayberry modeling underwear or sporting six-packs in Men's Fitness magazine.
That doesn't mean they aren't fit.
"These guys are remarkably fit and fast," said Art Bartolozzi, an orthopedic surgeon who was the Eagles' team physician from 1995 until last summer. "For big people, they move and carry their weight very well.
"Granted, some of them look pretty fat, with big overhanging bellies," Bartolozzi said. "But when you get into the pros, you need not only mass, but mass that can be easily accelerated. Force equals mass times acceleration, and you've got to have the acceleration to generate the force needed to play the game."
For linemen, mass is their metier. Some are required by contract to keep their weight at more than 300 pounds. They do so by consuming vast amounts of food - 6,000 to 10,000 calories a day - and pumping tons of iron, especially in the off-season, when their battered bodies can handle the stress.
By conventional standards, professional football linemen are perilously porky. The body mass index, or BMI, is a commonly accepted tool for evaluating obesity. A score in the low 20s is desirable. If your BMI is over 25, you're considered overweight. If it's over 30, you're considered obese and run the risk of succumbing to such ailments as heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes, arthritis, and cancer.
The BMIs of the Eagles are off the scale. The offensive linemen all have numbers in the high 30s. The defensive linemen are in the mid-30s.
