Friday, July 25, 2008

All's well with the Birds, sort of

Take a deep breath, all you green-faced zealots. As opposed to your Phillies, all is well with your Eagles.

Brian Westbrook reported to camp on time last night. The star running back who would like to be paid more like a star running back arrived and addressed his contract situation.

He has a new agent, and hopefully he soon will have a new contract with a whole lot of zeroes on the end of it. The only real question now is just how much money he can pry out of the Eagles’ wallet.

Westbrook clearly is no fool. With little in the way of leverage, other than the psyche of the team and the way it treats its star player, the running back saw nothing to be gained by holding out, which would have cost him $15,000 for every day he missed.

Also showing up on time last night was disgruntled cornerback Lito Sheppard. He wanted a new deal, unhappy with the one that will pay him $2 million in base pay this year. Instead he apparently lost his starting job when the Eagles threw a ton of money at free agent Asante Samuel of the Patriots.

But the big news on reporting day for veterans at Lehigh was supplied not by either Westbrook or Sheppard, but rather by the fairly large absence of giant offensive lineman Shawn Andrews.

He was a no-show, but he claims it’s not because he doesn’t like his contract either. Instead he informed the team he had some personal business he had to attend to, something I suppose that could not be handled last week or last month.

He is likely to report sometime next week.

In the meantime, all’s well with the Birds. Or as well as it can be until they put on the pads today. Then there will be the injuries, who stands out and who does not.

Just another summer at Lehigh.

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