ONE OF the keys to this coming Eagles season is the development of last season's rookies, the team's largest group of first-year players since the draft rounds were pared to single digits.
Eagles coach Andy Reid likes to talk about how crucial it is for a player to progress from his first to his second year, that this is where major growth occurs, as a player gets comfortable in his offensive or defensive system and can play instinctively again, as he did in college.
"Between your first and second year and your second and third year, that's the biggest transition you have, as far as your improvement," Eagles wideout Jason Avant said this week. Avant's catch total has gone up in each of his five NFL seasons. "The grasping of the playbook - you grasp it in your first year, but you don't really know the ins and outs, when you can ad-lib and when you can't . . . you don't understand that if the defense is playing Cover 3, I can buy time, because the quarterback is looking at me on the third read.
"All those are things that come with playing a year, being in meetings a year . . . When you're a rookie, you just do what they tell you to do. Your second year, you start to feel the game."
But the 15 rookies who suited up for the Eagles last season haven't seen a NovaCare practice field since January. The defensive guys haven't lined up under new coordinator Juan Castillo; the d-linemen have only the barest notion of the changes in philosophy new line coach Jim Washburn plans to bring. How much growth can we logically expect from this huge segment of the 2011 team, even if the NFL lockout gets wrapped up in the next week or so, as seems quite possible?
We already know that 2010 first-round pick Brandon Graham is unlikely to be ready to start the season, after December ACL surgery. What we learned this week, from Graham's comments to an Ann Arbor reporter who caught up with him at a Michigan charity golf tournament, is that his surgery included a microfracture procedure, an attempt to create cartilage where none exists. That's a serious complication; it was Victor Abiamiri's microfracture surgery last year that might have led the Eagles to draft Graham. Abiamiri ended up missing the 2010 season. It isn't clear that Graham's injury is as severe as Abiamiri's.
