Jamar Chaney

When reports that the NFL was near an agreement with its locked-out officials started to leak out, Eagles safety Kurt Coleman tweeted in glee. The news became official Thursday, and the Eagles will play Sunday night's game against the New York Giants with a regular crew. Never before have so many players had such an appreciation for officiating. "It's good to have them back," Coleman said. "I think this game is going to be a lot better with them back and run a lot smoother. " Wide receiver Jeremy Maclin said games should not be determined by officials, but also said he did not think about them when he played.

We'll start with this assumption: You don't care about the impact on a handful of media types when Andy Reid decides to close Eagles practices after 228 regular-season and playoff games. And that's fine. Even if the information gathered by reporters is meant for and thirstily consumed by Eagles fans, we get to skip over the knee-jerk reaction that goes, "Nobody cares about you guys in the media. " The reason to examine Reid's decision - which came down suddenly and without warning a half-hour before Thursday's scheduled-to-be-open practice - is what it tells us about Reid and about the state of the team.

CLEVELAND - While it wasn't difficult to label the effort of the offense for what it was - a disgrace - the strong outing from the Eagles defense on Sunday had to come with one significant qualifier. Brandon Weeden was terrible. The Browns quarterback had a truly wretched first NFL game. He completed only 12 of 35 pass attempts, tossed four interceptions and missed several wide open receivers. He didn't get much help from teammates, either, a few of whom dropped easy throws. So there was that.

Here are some observations and ruminations about the Eagles' victory over the Browns: CLEVELAND - Let's face it, the Eagles had no right winning Sunday's game at Cleveland. Michael Vick should have been intercepted at least three times during his game-winning drive. The quarterback's worst throw came when he lofted a pass to Jeremy Maclin in the corner of the end zone and the ball went right through the hands of linebacker L.J. Fort. "He threw it right to me," said Fort, who picked off Vick in the first half.

Andy Reid confirmed Friday that he will use all of his linebackers, shuffling them in and out depending on the package, when the Eagles open the season Sunday at Cleveland. Since the Eagles traded for DeMeco Ryans in March up until, really, Friday, Reid has said that Ryans is a three-down player. Now he isn't. "I've been very happy with DeMeco," Reid said. "I'm just giving everybody an opportunity. The one thing we've got is experience with play time at positions there. Everybody's going to have an opportunity to get in and do their thing.

There's been a merry-go-round at linebacker for the Eagles over the last few seasons, but the team made efforts this offseason to make it stop with the acquisitions of DeMeco Ryans and Mychal Kendricks. It might start spinning again on Sunday in Cleveland. Kendricks said Thursday after practice that the coaches had each of the Eagles' six linebackers practicing in various alignments in several packages on defense. "I would expect for all of us to be playing because that's what we're game-planning with," said Kendricks, who is expected to start at the strong side.

IT TAKES A village to cover a tight end, or something like that. Jamar Chaney said Thursday his hamstring is 100 percent, as the Eagles continued to try to find the right mix of linebackers in base and nickel for their season opener Sunday at Cleveland. Rookie Mychal Kendricks, the strongside starter who also plays in nickel, said he expects all the linebackers who are active to play some sort of role against the Browns, not only the starting group of Kendricks, DeMeco Ryans and Akeem Jordan.

Two weeks before the season opener, the Eagles shook up their starting lineup Sunday and promoted Akeem Jordan to first-team weakside linebacker in place of Brian Rolle, the latest move in the team's ongoing linebacker shuffle. Jordan, who has played five years with the Eagles, has started at least one game in each season in Philadelphia and has played all three linebacker spots. He did not know he was competing for the starting weakside spot until Sunday morning, when he was told that he is now a starter.

THERE COMES a point in every Eagles season when, with a heavy sigh, the coaching staff acknowledges the fact that it needs Akeem Jordan in the starting linebacking corps again. This year, that time arrived on Sunday, when Andy Reid announced Jordan is now his weakside starter, ahead of Brian Rolle, who this preseason has not played to the level he hinted at down the stretch last year. Reid indicated that if Jamar Chaney hadn't kept tweaking his hamstring, Chaney might be starting instead of Rolle, but with Chaney still not completely healthy, he'll go to Jordan, the 5-year veteran, instead of Rolle, the undersized second-year man. "He's been very consistent, and he deserves the opportunity," Reid said of Jordan, who has been practicing on the strongside this camp, but started his Eagles career at WIL. "He's a battler, that's what he is. I'm not gonna tell you there's anything fancy about him. He's tough and he knows his assignments.

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. - Coaches always warn players not to look at the numbers in training camp. Focus on doing your job, they tell them, and don't worry about the numbers. But that's easier said than done, particularly for a bubble player like Keenan Clayton, who doesn't need a roster or a depth chart to tell him he could find himself out of a job when the Eagles cut down to 53 players on Aug. 31. Clayton, a 6-1, 230-pound linebacker out of Oklahoma who was the first of the Eagles' three fourth-round picks in the 2010 draft, is listed as the team's No. 3 weakside linebacker behind Brian Rolle and Jamar Chaney.