Carson Wentz as a lot of other people.Pederson said that the Eagles
gave Wentz the keys to the kingdom with this offseason’s contract extension and
now it is up to the quarterback to “make sure the kingdom stays healthy.” Wentz
hasn’t stayed healthy the last two seasons and his ability to do so in 2019 will
be watched closely in Philadelphia and elsewhere.Wentz told Peter King of that
he’s spent a lot of time exploring ways to remain on the field. He’s lost some
weight as part of a plan for better overall health and says he feels better than
he has in quite a while.“Back feels good. Knee feels good
Randall Cunningham Jerseys Stitched ,” Wentz said. “I feel about as healthy as I’ve felt in a long time, both physically and mentally. Been able to take a
step back due to the injury the last few years, unfortunately, but it allowed me
to see the game from a different perspective. Allowed me to invest a lot of time
and energy into my body and into not only get healthy but finding ways to stay
healthy for hopefully the duration of my career. I feel really good and ready to
go.”Pederson said this offseason that he thinks Wentz will be better for having
gone through the adversity of the last two years. Being healthier is essential
to making that the case. NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Bert Bell had been burned and
sought a way to get even.His creation, the NFL draft, has become an industry
unto itself and the league’s third-most popular annual event behind the Super
Bowl and opening weekend.Bell owned the Philadelphia Eagles in 1933 and was hot
to sign Stanley “King Kong” Kostka of the Minnesota Gophers. All collegians were
free agents back then — college football was far more popular than the pros —
and Bell saw the bruising fullback/linebacker as a building block for his
team.But Kostka signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers; yes, that was a football
franchise back then. Never mind that Kostka lasted one season in the NFL. Bell
had a calling.“I made up my mind that this league would never survive unless we
had some system whereby each team had an even chance to bid for talent against
each other,” he later told The Associated Press.With some negotiating and
arm-twisting — Bell was so good at that he soon would become NFL commissioner —
he persuaded owners of the other eight clubs to try a draft. The team with the
league’s worst record would pick first and the rest would go in reverse order of
their success in the standings.On Feb 8-9, 1936, in a Philadelphia hotel owned
by the Bell family, the draft was born. And guess who had the first selection:
the 2-9 Eagles.That they took halfback Jay Berwanger, the first Heisman Trophy
winner, who played at Chicago University — yes, that was a college team back
then — and couldn’t sign him was somewhat embarrassing; Berwanger chose to go
into the “real world” where he could earn more money than the Eagles were
offering.Regardless, the draft was established, with nine rounds, increased to
10 the next year and to 20 in 1939, with this oddity in 1938 and ’39: only the
five teams with the worst winning percentage in the previous season made
selections in the second and fourth rounds.The number of rounds fluctuated
through the years
http://www.eagleslockerroom.com/authentic-corey-clement-jersey , in part because of competition from the All-America Football Conference in the
1940s, but also because college football grew and more players were available.
For a span of a dozen drafts, there even was a bonus pick to start proceedings,
with one team each year getting until every team had gotten one.When the AFL
began in 1960 and soon started pirating NFL players and hiding college seniors,
the NFL moved its draft up from the spring. Cloak-and-dagger stories developed,
as soon-to-be Pro Football Hall of Famer Gil Brandt told Ken Rappoport and me
for the book “On The Clock, The Story of the NFL Draft.”“Our battle for players
with the AFL featured the so-called baby sitters who would hide players so the
other league couldn’t find them,” said Brandt, who scouted the colleges for the
Dallas Cowboys for three decades, drafting the likes of Roger Staubach, Bob
Lilly and Tony Dorsett, and now is the lead draft consultant to the NFL. “There
was a group of people, ex-coaches, ex-players, even the governor of Oregon, who
were involved.”The merger led to a common draft, but the grab bag for talent
wasn’t a big deal whether staged in Philly, New York, Washington
Womens DeSean Jackson Jersey , Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Los Angeles or Chicago. Then television stepped up.This brand new TV entity called ESPN
approached NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle in 1980 offering to broadcast the
proceedings from the New York Sheraton. Rozelle couldn’t fathom why ESPN boss
Chet Simmons made the offer.“Pete thought Chet was out of his mind,” said former
ESPN vice president John Wildhack. “But Pete said, ‘Let’s try it.'”Desperate for
programming, ESPN hired Bill Fitts, who had worked games on CBS and NBC, as
producer of the draft show, which Fitts admitted in “On The Clock” was
rudimentary.“I would say at the beginning it was like with our golf coverage —
we started covering one hole,” Fitts said with a laugh. “Look what it went
to.”It would not be an exaggeration to say the draft has exploded beyond the
selection meeting tag the league hung on it. And don’t underestimate the credit
TV deserves, first with ESPN’s gavel-to-gavel coverage and then with NFL Network
joining in since 2006. Plus a move to prime time for Thursday’s first round in
2010, and to the early evening for Rounds two and three on Friday.Would Mel
Kiper Jr., Todd McShay and Mike Mayock have become household names to draftniks?
Would there even be draftniks? Would mock drafts begin appearing as soon as
college underclassmen declared for the pros in January; in 1990, the NFL began
allowing collegians whose class had been in school for three years to apply for
the draft.Just as television has been a powerful force in the popularization of
pro football, it has been irreplaceable in the universalizing of the draft.When
the league moved the proceedings to Radio City Music Hall, where it held nine
drafts, it also turned the fans loose in the art-deco landmark. That meant
several thousand folks dressed in jerseys from all 32 teams howling and
screaming — and often booing — the selections.That made for great TV, naturally.
And it gave the draft an entertainment element it never had, with red carpets to
follow.Those fans would follow the draft when the NFL turned it into a road
show. In 2014
Cameron Johnston Jersey , Radio City, owned by Madison Square Garden, had scheduled a spring spectacular for the usual draft dates in late April. The
league had to move the draft back into May, only to see the Radio City show
switched to 2015.Annoyed by the Garden’s machinations, and intrigued by the
possibilities of moving around its biggest offseason event, the NFL abandoned
the Big Apple for the Windy City. After two highly successful years in Chicago
in which the league used iconic local settings and fan festivals to boost the
draft’s profile and the size of the crowds, it headed to Philadelphia — the
original site back in Bert Bell’s days.There, using the Philadelphia Museum of
Art, with the “Rocky” statue and all, as a backdrop, the NFL saw an astounding
250,000 attend over three days.“Philadelphia is raising the bar,” Commissioner
Roger Goodell said.Last year, a stadium was the site for the first time, at
Jerry’s Palace near Dallas. And now, we head to Music City, alongside the honky
tonks on Broadway.Next year, Las Vegas.What would Bert Bell think?
