Todd Herremans

NEW ORLEANS - If you go strictly by career starts, Bobbie Williams has the distinction of being the most successful offensive lineman the Eagles drafted during Andy Reid's 14 seasons as head coach. Williams, a 36-year-old backup guard for the AFC champion Ravens, who face the 49ers in Super Bowl XLVII, has made 136 NFL starts since the Eagles selected him in the second round of the 2000 draft. That's 36 more than Todd Herremans, 41 more than John Welbourn and 79 more than Shawn Andrews.

As he follows Juan Castillo, Howard Mudd is careful not to disparage him. "I'm treading on the guy I'm succeeding, and I don't want to do that," Mudd said Still . . . Mudd's lines in Indianapolis allowed 18.5 sacks per season. Castillo's allowed 40.5 per season in the same time span. Of course, Mudd's Colts lines protected Peyton Manning, a predictable, immobile quarterback all too willing to throw balls away. Castillo's Eagles dealt mainly with Donovan McNabb and Michael Vick, the most electric scramblers in league history, who welcomed contact and who hated to waste a down.

CLEVELAND - The way Eagles center Jason Kelce figures it, the identity of the referees does not matter because the process is the same. Every week, the refs' job is to call penalties and the offensive line's job is to adjust to whatever standard is being set that day. And so, on an afternoon when the Eagles were penalized 12 times for 110 yards by referees working in place of locked-out union members - a day when four of the five offensive linemen...

Todd Herremans ' return to the field should be good news for the Eagles' offensive line, their running game and Kevin Kolb 's protection. It might be bad news, though, for Stacy Andrews . With Herremans back at his familiar left guard spot, Max Jean-Gilles took Andrews' right guard slot for some first-team practice repetitions Wednesday. Jean-Gilles, who had been filling in for Herremans, rotated with Andrews in working with the starters during practice. Jean-Gilles said he wants to compete for a starting guard spot, whether it is on the right or left side.

Eagles left tackle King Dunlap , who has been filling in for an injured Jason Peters (hamstring), sat out practice Thursday with what the team described as lower-back spasms, forcing Winston Justice onto the first team for the first time all season. Justice worked at right tackle, the position he has played most of his career, and Todd Herremans - who had been there - moved to left tackle. The shuffle may not last long. The Eagles expect Dunlap to be ready for Sunday's game, but if he can't go, it would add another wrinkle to the offensive line.

On an NFL Tuesday that was supposed to be all about the new, the most revealing moment for the Eagles came when a familiar face, tackle Todd Herremans, talked about a contract extension that will keep him in the same place he has spent his entire career. "The Eagles have been known for a while as a team that doesn't take care of their draft picks and pays everyone else's as picks and players," Herremans said. "I think they're trying to change that stigma that they have. " Herremans wasn't trying to stir controversy - he repeatedly expressed gratitude toward the Eagles.

The question was a good one, and the answer was interesting. Why have the Washington Redskins gone from a 6-2 team that appeared playoff-bound to a 7-7 team with almost no chance of playing in the postseason? "The one obvious thing is just guys getting banged up and injured," Eagles coach Andy Reid said after practice yesterday. "That's a tough thing to put back together. Other than that, they have a good football team. " What was most interesting about Reid's answer is that it suddenly applies to his own football team as the Eagles, 8-5-1, get ready for another must-win game tomorrow against the Redskins at FedEx Field.

Part of the function of a social networking site is to reveal, in real time, what people think. That's not always a good thing. Tuesday morning, as his teammates slogged through another day of training camp at Lehigh University, injured Eagles lineman Todd Herremans was busy tweeting. He had recently watched HBO's True Blood - a series about vampires - and took umbrage with it on Twitter. Herremans shared those thoughts with his more than 1,800 followers. What Herremans wrote appears in this space exactly as it did on Twitter: "So..

JAMAAL JACKSON, the longest-tenured Eagle, had one question for the panel that was about to bid him farewell by phone on Comcast SportsNet's Daily News Live: "Y'all sure you're interviewing the right Jackson?" Jamaal started 72 games at center for the Birds between 2005 and 2010, but he knew the big news yesterday evening was not his release at age 31, after a year in Howard Mudd purgatory. The big news was the 5-year contract agreed to by wideout DeSean Jackson. It was that kind of day, a frenzy of Eagles developments, one quickly topping another, all of them involving players who were on the 2011 roster.

IN MARCH, Jamaal Jackson couldn't even hang from a pull-up bar. In March, Todd Herremans weighed 275 pounds. In March, Juqua Parker had people wondering why the Eagles signed him to a 5-year deal - to average five sacks a season. In March, Brent Celek was a two-game wonder. Then, they visited Steve Saunders at the Power Train Sports Institute site in Cherry Hill. There, they enjoyed - or, endured - not only exotic workouts but also strict, tailored diets that even monitor vitamin and mineral intake.