Eagles' Graham is 'fat' and happy to get in camp

BETHLEHEM - Brandon Graham's lease was up in Ann Arbor, where he was working out with the Michigan football team. Graham had to negotiate an extra week of wiggle room. Meanwhile, he was getting ribbed by his former Wolverine teammates, who had responded to his attempts to bulk up to 278 pounds for the rigors of the NFL by jokingly calling Graham "fat boy."

It was time to go, time to move on. Graham felt it more with every passing day. He made sure agent Joel Segal felt it, as well.

Segal "was coaching me through the whole thing," Graham said yesterday afternoon, following the Eagles' first full-squad workout of training camp, in which Graham was the second-team left defensive end. "He was just letting me know that, 'I'm going to have you there on time, that's my worry,' and he was there. He was right on time with it, even though I wasn't here last night. I couldn't make the [last] flight [out of Detroit], but I was here early, first thing in the morning."

Graham said he got to bed about 2:30 a.m., got up at 5:15 to fly to Philadelphia, and eventually napped about 30 minutes while being driven up to Lehigh by team security, "so I'm feeling kind of good."

How tough was sitting out the rookie days?

"I wasn't really worried about it, but it took a lot of pressure off me because a lot of people weren't signed. I just wanted to get here because I wanted to show coach [Andy] Reid and all those guys, Mr. [Joe] Banner and Mr. [Jeffrey] Lurie, that they didn't waste a pick."

A team source noted early in the week that agents generally don't consider their clients late to camp until veterans are due to report. Graham, the Eagles' first-round pick, 13th overall, was asked if that was the deadline he and Segal set.

"Yes, because he was telling me that realistically I wasn't going to be at the rookie camp," Graham said, with only one first-rounder signed in the entire league when Eagles rookies reported Monday evening. "But, for the veterans, I was going to be there, and he was like, 'You're really not going to miss too much.' "

Graham's lifeline was third-round rookie defensive end Daniel Te'o-Nesheim, with whom he talked by phone every evening once the rookies reported.