2012 Training Camp Thread

[ice grillin you]

pimp tore his ego

[Tomahawk]

im sure its that im by nature a very negative person but all ive done since camp started yesterday is wait for news to come out that shady has blown out his knee

That wouldn't bode well for your guarantee of an Eagles Super Bowl victory.

[ice grillin you]

no it would not

[ice grillin you]

this old man is classic....i hate even making the comparison but hes kinda like a modern day buddy ryan

"How tough will final cuts be considering your depth on the d-line?"

Washburn: "World needs ditch diggers too."

[ice grillin you]

holy shtein so i finally got to read this whole interview and it might be the single best thing ive ever read...even better than rjs' 16th century english novels by people i should have heard of...theres so many crazy quotables....wash is a gawd and completely certifiable

"Will Fletcher Cox's development have to be accelerated with Mike Patterson out indefinitely?"

Washburn: He's going to be accelerated anyway. He's a good player and he's got to play. We're going to try to have the four tackles be starters, and then somebody comes out first. He's a mature guy anyway. I spent time with him at our facility, took him out to eat, and found out who he was. He's mature and he's savvy. I gave him a riddle two nights ago, the hardest riddle I had, and the next morning he told me he had the answer to the riddle. I said, 'You Google'd it, didn't you?' and he said, 'Yeah I did, I cheated.' He's clever and he's smart. He's country smart."

"What was the riddle?"

Washburn: "I don't know, too complicated for me to remember."

"What do you expect from your group this year compared to last year?"

Washburn: "I hope a whole lot better. No excuse, but they didn't know my name, I didn't know their name, we met at that meeting room upstairs at that student center and I had to introduce myself. This is a whole new defense and it was just different. I look at the first game and all the plays we screwed up, especially against the run ... I look at Atlanta and St. Louis and it's painful to watch our technique. They didn't know what I wanted and I just didn't do a good job getting it across. We didn't have time. It was sort of a mess. No excuse, it's just life. Other teams were in the same situation, but it seems like they know what we want now. It's going to be so much better. No way. It's got to be a lot better.

"It comes everywhere. They [had] more front four sacks than anybody's had in a lot of years, but that's because we had talented players. We have really good talent. We started figuring it out at the end. I'll be crushed, hell, I'll quit if it ain't a whole lot better. They can even fire my ass if we're not a whole lot better. We should be a lot better. Trent Cole had no idea what we were doing when we started this last year. Babin had some idea. I got good players. Tell you what. Said it before. This ain't no company line. But the Eagles will get you players. I've been other places where if you lost a player, you were dead in the water. Somebody said you got a great player, I said no, we got a whole bunch of good ones. I'd rather have a whole bunch of good'uns than some average 'uns, wouldn't ya'all?

"Where does Brandon Graham fit in?"

Washburn: "He fits. He's a whole lot better. Changing his habits in his life. I think he got serious. I don't know. He was a good player in college. He was. I watched every game he played. Good player. Got too heavy. Lost some weight. Should be a good player here. He wasn't even with us out here, was he? He's a good kid and I think that he's like all of us, when you suffer setbacks in your life at 21, 22 years old, it's hard. Try to remember when you were that age. He was a stud and all of a sudden he goes to not being a part of the team and not playing. When you're rehabbing, sometimes you pick up weight and he has a tendency to get a little heavy. I'm happy for him and I can't imagine him not having a really good year."

"Will Brandon be motivated by you guys drafting Vinny Curry?"

Washburn: "He doesn't need Vinny Curry to motivate him. He's got everything to motivate him. He's been beat down. That's the way it goes. When you're a first-round draft choice and you don't produce great the first year. The guy up north (Giants' DE Jason Pierre-Paul) is playing his ass off, and people throw that in his face all the time. But I can't imagine him not having a really good year."

"Can you stop the run playing the Wide 9?"

Washburn: "Everybody talks about the Wide 9, but we just move a guy three feet. It's 54 percent pass on first down. I can get a 290-pounder out there to play the run 100 times better than Babin or Phillip Hunt and you're conceding 54 percent of the time, but what we want is to have our cake and eat it too. Want to be able to get in a position where you can pass-rush and play the run equally well. We've been the top two or three in the league in rush defense playing the same front. There's some snakes into every defense you play. You play 3-4, there's some places they can get you. I just think after a year we know where the snakes are."

"Is Trent Cole the most complete defensive end you've ever had?"

Washburn: "Never had one that did everything as good as he does. Every coach says he doesn't read the papers, but most coaches lie, but I try not to lie because I'm smart enough to figure out. Don't listen to anybody, but the comments I did hear about him in the past, before I got here from everybody, was how his production dropped off at the end of the year. But I knew playing two groups as we did would [help him]. And he ended up getting six sacks in the last four games. Seriously. It [rotation] works. [In previous years], he was worn out at the end, he had played a lot of snaps. Because he wanted to play them. He told me when I first got here, I ain't rotating. Said it right up there in that meeting room. Said, 'Yes you are or you ain't going to play.' He's a great kid, Trent."

"What benefit does having interchangeable tackles and ends give you?"

Washburn: "I'm going to move everybody everywhere. Interchangeable is a good word, isn't it? [Fletcher Cox] is going to play on passing downs, he's going to have to move around. Watching Justin Smith [49ers defensive tackle] last night, who might be the best defensive player in the league, standing up some just to have fun with it. Make it hard for [opposing teams]. Make them spend time practicing that. Everybody acts like you're coming up with something new, but we just took the tackles and put them outside, took the ends and put them inside and stood up the ends and ran the exact same defense that we run regular. Just make them spend time on it. We were playing somebody, they had shown the Wildcat two weeks before, and we spent time on the Wildcat and they don't run it. So what did they do showing it two weeks before? It made us use valuable practice time getting ready for it."

"Where does Phillip Hunt fit in?"

Washburn: "He fits in real good. I like him a lot. Make no mistake. He goes to church with me and my wife. This is cool. Good person, good football player. ... He thinks he's 6-6. He's a good one. We have a bunch of good ones. This might be the best group of people I've ever coached."

"How tough will final cuts be considering your depth on the d-line?"

Washburn: "World needs ditch diggers too."

Washburn, on Darryl Tapp: "Darryl's a good player, isn't he? Why has he not been better than he has been in the past? I remember that game in Seattle when he had 4 1/2 sacks. I loved him. I coached him in the Senior Bowl. It's funny. We played the Eagles in Nashville two years ago, remember that? Ya'all might have been down there. Darryl came down to me before the game and said, 'Wash, when am I ever going to get with you?' At the Senior Bowl, thought we were made for each other. You never know what the Lord's got in store. Sure enough, here we are. He's a good person. If you want to know who the energy source of our group is at practice, it's Darryl. I didn't play him enough [last year]. He only played I think 29 percent of our snaps last year [29.5 percent]."

"Surprised Vinny Curry didn't get drafted in the first round?"

Washburn: "I love Vinny. I kept asking the scouts, how's that guy from Marshall doing? 'He's doing good, but he's got problems.' What are his problems? 'His mom died.' Well, his mom died and the circumstances in which she died [liver cancer], I'd have problems too. But he's a good person. We got one guy from Neptune, N.J. [Curry], the other guy from Yazoo City, Miss. [Fletcher Cox], 21-, 22-year old guys. Good guys.

"Tell you again, this is a great group of people. If my daughter dated Phillip Hunt or Darryl Tapp or any of those guys, I'd be proud... I think [Curry's] 40 time at the Combine ruined him. Ruined him. I forget what he ran, but he ran slow at the Combine [4.92], and all of a sudden he's a really good player and he went to nothing because he ran one 40 and it sucked. Then he went to his Pro Day and ran fast. I went over and worked him out. I ain't care what he runs at the Combine. Who cares?"

"How are you going to stop the run with this defense?"

Washburn: "Jeff [Fisher] would say, 'You've got to run the ball and stop the run,' and that was in 1999, and that was true. But right now? You can stop the run all you want, but if you can't stop the pass, you're dead. You've got to be able to stop it all to a degree, but it's like the Packers finished last in [pass and overall] defense [last year] and went 15-1. You got Aaron Rodgers.

Jeff said, 'You've got to be able to run the ball in December.' Eddie George carried it 400 times a year and his career went pow, like that. He got it from Buddy [Ryan in Philly]. Run the ball in December. Meanwhile, shoot, Aaron Rodgers is throwing it 60 times in Lambeau in January. Doesn't matter. [If I were an offensive coach] I'd throw it. I'm sorry, but I'd throw it a bunch. I'd be able to run the ball, but I'd throw the ball."

On working with legendary offensive line coach Howard Mudd

Washburn: "It's fun to know that we were against each other for so many years. He called me on Friday nights after the week was over and asked me how practice went. I would sit there and tell him that he's a crazy son of a gun. We sit on the bench an hour before the games and talk about motorcycles or something. Now, to actually see him, all of the stuff that I used to think was so ungodly complicated actually wasn't. All along, it looked so difficult. John Madden said he's the best assistant coach ever. The best thing about Howard coming here is that I don't ever have to coach against Howard ever again. He's so much better than I was, it's a joke. He probably liked going against me."

"Where are you guys now as a staff compared to last year?"

Washburn: "Night and day. We should be. I mean, it was Mike Caldwell's first year [as linebackers coach], Mike Zordich's first year [as safeties coach], Juan Castillo's first year [as defensive coordinator]. Johnnie Lynn [who was fired after one year as corners coach] was a veteran, but he had never been in this group. Learning process for everybody. Learning the players, learning a new system. No excuses, because everybody had a lockout. But we should have been a lot better."

"What are your early impressions of new safeties coach Todd Bowles?"

Washburn: "I like him. Seems like a really good person. I think he's a solid person. The first time Bowles stood up in front of a defensive meeting, guys in the back row, all my guys, usually like this [leans back in his seat, disinterested]. I looked and they were all like this [leaning forward, paying attention]. Wow. Sort of commanded some attention."

"Do you think Juan needs to blitz more this year?"

Washburn: "To me, the best thing to do would be if you can get there with four and lead the league in sacks and quarterback knockdowns and tackles for loss. Now you've got seven guys back there you can do a lot of different things with. I think you need to blitz, but I'm not so sure you need to do it so much on third down, I think you probably need to blitz on earlier downs. But if you can rush with four, why would you put your guys in man coverage if you can get there?"

"Why blitz on second down?"

Washburn: "To give them some different looks. People think you just blitz to get the passer, but run blitzes are huge in this league, always have been, so if you know it's a running down what you want to do -- and a running down is sort of iffy now -- then you want to bring a run blitz."

"How has NFL defense changed over the years?"

Washburn: "Used to be like ... this is the truth ... I know it's hard to look at a guy like me and figure I like stats, but 3rd-and-1 in the old days, God dang, you might even put your goal-line defense out there. But 3rd-and-1 now is 48 perent pass. 3rd-and-2, well, there was no question it was still run, but 3rd-and-2 is 67 percent pass. And 3rd-and-3 is 88 percent pass. Go to pro-football-reference.com.

"Decade of the 80s, how many 4,000-yard passers were there? There might have been 10 or 12 (actually 14). And there were 14 last year [actually 10]. It's unbelievable. It's just a passing league now. I went to California recruiting [for New Mexico] in 1980, and they were doing all these passing leagues, and the guy I went with said, 'Wash, you're seeing the future,' and I started coaching in the Western Athletic Conference, they were throwing. Back home [in the SEC] they were running the Wishbone and killing each other. Out [West], they started throwing the ball. We played Jim McMahon [of BYU] in our first game in New Mexico. Andy Reid was the left offensive tackle. And they were throwing the ball, and all my buddies back home said, 'How is it out there,' and I said, 'It's crazy man.'

"And now it's evolved into this. How many offensive lines now do you see who look like Buffalo's [in the early 1990s] -- with the House, [325-pound tackle Howard] Ballard, and [310-pound tackle] Will Wolford, all those guys? You see more athletic offensive linemen now, and as a result they're not knocking people off the ball. The plays that gave us problems last year weren't the power plays and the pushing us off and knocking us off the ball but tricking us. Traps and whams, all this stuff, and that's what it's become, because they want more athletic linemen and you don't see many big people. This is the way I'm seeing it. Just look at the stats. Go look. You'll see what's happened.

"Last year, there were three 5,000-yard passers. [Bengals rookie] Andy Dalton? Throws for [nearly] 3,500 yards and [Panthers rookie] Cam Newton throws for 4,000 yards, and they're just flingin' it in the air, and they make the rules where you don't hit the receivers and you can hold, so everything lends to the passing game, TV ratings and everything. How many games 7-3 do you see anymore? (Former Eagles all-pro defensive end] William Fuller, who was a great great player, is in camp [coaching], and he said, 'Man, I remember being in so many 10-7 games.' Not anymore. It's a passing league. So all we try to do with the 9-technique was try to get a pass rush on first down. You didn't want to sign a defensive end, No. 1 draft choice and put him playing over the tight end on 2nd and 8."

"How do you feel that Juan Castillo handled last year?"

Washburn: "He stuck in there when times got dark. He was mentally tough. The only thing you can do is just keep working. It's hard. It's hard. He had to talk to the press every day, too, didn't he? That must have been just absolutely miserable. I can't even imagine. But yeah, the mark of a good man, Abraham Lincoln said, it ain't about getting knocked down, it's about getting back up. You've got to have thick skin and learn from your mistakes.

"So many times I admit I screwed up. It was hard I'm sure. It was hard on all of us. But you know what, the more you don't let the outside influences bother you, the better chance you have. I just surround myself with my players and say, 'Hey, Wash, I'm just going to coach.' Keep my head down and don't let the outside influences get to you. Because you can have problems. A lot of coaches in this league, they Google themselves. They do now. I'm just telling you. I think it's insecurity or something, I don't know. it's just important believing what you know is right."

"What could you do last year to help Juan?"

Washburn: "To coach my guys the best I can. There's no consoling, cheerleading, anything. I just get my guys to play the best they can. I ain't in charge of winning and losing. I'm just in charge of defensive line and doing the best I can. That's my job. And I need to do a better job than I did last year. I have to."

"How much will you miss Mike Patterson?"

Washburn: "He's a constant. Every time I turn on the film on Monday I know he's going to play good. He's a constant guy. He might not make a million plays, but he's always where he's supposed to be and always doing the right thing and that was a wonderful feeling to have a guy out there you knew was going to play the same every week. There's four positions out there and he always where he's supposed to be, played hard. It's hard to stomach a loss like that. Hope he's back sooner than later."

"You talk about defensive tackle Cedric Thornton a lot. What do you like about him?"

Washburn: "He's big, strong, tough. Just raw. Doesn't know what he doesn't know. But he wants to be a football player, and you think I'm just BS'ing you, but he's just another great kid. That room's just full of great people. I'm not just saying it. I'm not lying. I can't lie. That's why they don't want me to talk. But it's the absolute truth. My wife went out to Del Frisco's, big dinner, my wife's the only female in there, she said this is the best bunch of kids I've ever been around."

"What do you think about defensive tackle Antonio Dixon?"

Washburn: "A lot more after the spring. He's a talent. I couldn't tell [last year]. He was so heavy and out of shape. I couldn't tell what he was. It was disgusting how out of shape he was. He had all these injuries and no off-season, but he looked so much different in the spring, I'm so excited about him. Got himself in shape and made a commitment. I didn't know what he had, but he got himself in shape. ... He worked his butt off, and he's down to maybe 330 from 360 or whatever it was. I said, 'Wow, this guy has some quickness and he likes to play.' He's tough, and he has ability. I was pleasantly surprised.

"I'm excited about him. He's a really good person, and he really wants to be a good player. I like him a lot and he's going to help us."

"How did Dixon get back in shape so quickly?"

Washburn: "Two words. [Eagles strength and coordinator director] Barry Rubin. Barry Rubin. Barry. Rubin. Two words. He's a good one."

"Howard said his group got a C or D the first half of last year and an A or B the second half. How would you grade your guys?"

Washburn: "I couldn't say. I know we got better. He's a lot smarter than I am. He's a genius. He could have been a doctor, lawyer. I either had to do this or be a Merchant Marine, construction worker. Good guy. I've been blessed, whether it's Howard's last year or not, when he walked away from the Colts, he gave me a sideline jacket that hangs in my closet. I gave him my sideline jacket. Isn't that cool?

"So anyway, Howard's coat is in my closet. Isn't that cool? It's just a privilege to get to coach with somebody like him. It's a privilege to be here with the Eagles. I like Andy, I like Juan. It's a good place. I look out there on the field, and say, 'Thank you Lord. Thanks for this chance for an ignorant country boy like me.' Look at the mountains [behind Lehigh] and everything here. It's cool. Get to coach football."

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

He's unstable and hilarious.

[ice grillin you]

him never having advanced past position coach makes all the sense in the world now

[rjs246]

None of that made any sense.

[SD]

They should let him do post game PC's instead of Times yours.

[MDS]

Holy shtein wash is off the charts

[methdeez]

That was pretty awesome.

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

Jim Washburn yells at you first and hugs you later. We know that about him by now. Today, he ripped into rookie Vinny Curry for jumping offsides on what Washburn deemed the worst hard count he's ever heard out of Nick Foles.

[SD]

I'll be there Sunday the 5th

Havas I'm assuming you'll be in your normal spot last row middle bleachers

[Munson]

[General_Failure]

Is the next step for you a pony avatar?