PHLY Philadelphia Eagles Podcast - What’s the best part of Philadelphia Eagles training camp?

Episode Date: July 12, 2025

Zach and Fran's favorite things about training camp Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Training camp is around the corner. We can almost hear the pads being cracked right now. This is the P.HLY Eagle Show. That's Fran Duffy. I'm Zach Berman. Fran, I want to ask you, let's discuss our favorite things about training camp. We'll go back and forth.

Your three, my three. You first. That's your favorite thing about training camp. For me, it's got to be one-on-one drills. To me, when you're looking at training camp practice, there's a lot to take in. You are one set of eyeballs. There's no way,

If you try to see a little, or you try to see a lot, you typically see a little. So for the drills where you can be laser focused in one, one-on-one battle, to me, that is advantageous. And then, too, the other part of it as well is there's less context required. You get to see, you know, A.J. Brown versus Quignon Mitchell. You get to see Sequin Barclay versus Zach Bond. You get to see Dallas Goddard versus Reed Blankenship. There's a little bit less projection there at all. Like, did the offensive linemen mess this up?

Or, you know, was this a bad ball? Was the timing messed up? Now you're just saying like, all right, it's, it's, good on good. And that's one of the good things about it as well is that it's typically starter versus starter. It's not a ton of reps every single day, but I love being able to see the one-on-ones. And I would say too, and you could speak to this. You know, the Eagles, they've got three practice fields. Not every practice field is created equal from a vantage point standpoint for us in the media. And so if there are certain fields where you get, you're right on top of the action,

then there are others where you're not. But when you're in the one-on-ones, for the most part, you've got a good vantage point. Sometimes they do like tight ends and and the safety is over on the far field, and it's like 80 yards away. But for the most part, you're right in front of the action. I agree with you there. And that actually ties in the mind,

which is, like, from a big picture perspective, they tell the truth with their actions, right? Because this time of year, it's the only time we get to watch, right? And so that's what I like about it, is that there's other times a year where you're taking their word for. There's other times a year where it's like

you're hearing things. This is happening right in front of you. And so, and it used to be at Lehigh that it was open to the public. Now there's a finite amount of people who get to watch it. So we're the eyes and the ears of the fans. And that's always a fun responsibility that you don't get, frankly, during the season. And so what I like about training camp is that for one month, you get the same intel, basically, as the coaches. Now, we're not there for walkthroughs, but the practices are.

are happening in front of you. So you, you know, they tell the truth. They can say what they want, but you're seeing it in front of you. And that's why, like your practice observations

and Bose practice observations, they're so strong for that reason. It's, it's definitely, you know, we talk about it with the draft as well where, you know,

you can lie in press conferences. You can, you can extend, expand truths, but look, you draft a guy, like, you're,

you are showing, like, this is what our motivations are. I agree. You kind of get that same sense here in training camp. Yeah. So you're number,

All right. My number two, joint practice. It's a little bit new in terms of like, you know, over the last several years, we're starting to see pretty basically every team has at least one joint practice every year. But I think the benefits of joint practice are you get to see your team go up against another team in a controlled environment. And so, yeah, you typically would get that in preseason. But now you are guaranteed. If you want to see, you know, Terry McLaren go up against Quinion Mitchell, I'm just, you know, inventing a matchup there. You can script that in one-on-one during Team 11 and 11 and you're good to go and you got good work for those guys. And now you can get them off the field and put them on ice for the rest of the week.

You don't have to worry about live contact in a preseason type environment. I love joint practice. I think that it's so beneficial, honestly, like not being with the Eagles here this year. Like that was one of the best times to go back and watch tape if you could was to be able to go watch joint practice. Because again, every rep matters. And you have twice the reps. because there's another team on the field. So there's more football being played.

I would say that that's definitely one of my favorite parts of the summer. Yeah. And they're practicing against the Cleveland Browns this year. So mine here is that stuff happens, right? Which, which like, and I'll specifically mention it with like undrafted players. Yeah. Because you get to see, I always like, When we talk about read Blankenship comes in, he's down the depth chart.

And you see him start to move up the Jep chart, right? You see the players who are, we might call them Camp Bodies, and it's like, wow, this guy can play. So I really like those stories. I'll give an example actually that predates my time going in covering the Eagles. So this is going to be year 14 covering the Eagles. When my first NFL beat was the New York Giants in 2010. And they had an undrafted rookie named Victor Cruz. And at the time, it was like, man, this guy keeps making plays.

Who is he? Right? And it's good stories from Patterson, New Jersey. And then later, you know, sure enough, Victor Cruz eventually becomes one of the top wide receivers in the NFL for a period of time. And so you get to see that develop. And so when I say stuff happens, like Jordan Mila as an example with the Eagles, You know, we've seen his development up close.

My first one was that they tell the truth. But the second one is that like there's friction. There's friction in good ways. There's friction in bad ways. You get to mix it up. And so you see it sometimes too where a player, you know, last year, for instance, Bryce Huff. We expected Bryce Huff to be more of a factor. He wasn't.

Stuff happens in camp. You hate to say injuries, right? but like I'm never happy there's injuries, right? But like you're, there's the new cycle keeps changing. And as a reporter, I like it when there's like stuff that happens. And it's not just what do you think of this position? What do you think of that position? But like, you know, there's the storyline constantly updates.

Let me ask you this from a process standpoint. At what point do you say like, okay, this is a one-off versus? is, oh, this is something real than what we're seeing right now. Yeah, good, good question. I would say by after the first preseason game. Okay. You know, and so I think that week between the first and second preseason game, which this week will be the joint practices, again, I'm sorry,

this year will be the joint practices. That's when I start to say, all right, my eyes aren't deceiving me. Right. That's always something that's tough for me is like, all, you know, E.J. Jenkins caught two touchdowns in the first week. Like, oh, all right, is it, are we rocket ship to the moon here? for E.J. Jenkins, again, I'm just throwing names out. But, you know, sometimes those things take off and sometimes they fizzle out. So it's certainly something you want to make sure you touch on. Your third one.

My third one is also another process one. To me, I actually was just having the conversation with my wife this week. I love, I'm a creature of habit. I love routine. And when you get into the summer, you get into the off season, I do like the freedom that May, June, and the early stages of July bring where it's a, I can wake up. If I want to watch college film, great. If I want to watch NFL film, great. If I want to go through stats, great. Whatever I want to do, I can do it.

But I love the routine of the football season, the cadence, and that begins in training camp. Now, the difference between the regular season and the summer is the way I always put it when I first started is when you're in training camp, you can't tell if it's Monday, Sunday, or Wednesday. Because every day is basically the same. When you get into the regular season, I couldn't tell you if next week is Halloween, Thanksgiving,

or if the season's almost over. because you're just in the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, routine where everything is the same that way. But I just love the fact that once we get to training camp, now it is, it's time for football and it's time to get back in a routine. And again, as someone who loves to be in that structure, I'm very excited by that. Yeah, so mine's actually a process thing too here.

And following up on that. And that is, it's earlier in the day. I'm a morning person. I was up this morning at 4.43. And I, if long-time viewers of the show know that... How did you go to bed last night? I went to bed last night at 12, 1230 thereabouts. And so long-time viewers of the show know that I like the mornings.

And that my best thinking comes in the morning, my best work comes in the mornings. And so this isn't like, you know, there was a period of time where training camp practice was much earlier. Yeah. But what I like about this is that... that, you know, they're on their practice field typically like 10 a.m. theirabouts. And that, you know, they're off the practice field 1130. You're finishing talking to players around 12, 30, 1 o'clock. And, yeah, it's different.

You know, there was a point in time with Andy Reid where you had two days. Yeah. Chip Kelly, there was a time when it was like 1 o'clock practices. And then Doug Peterson sometimes went early in the mornings, right? There was a time when it was like 8 or 9. Yeah. But I'm a morning person. and once they get to the season, it shifts much later.

As you all recall from the shows last year, typically, you know, I wasn't out of the locker room until like 5.30, 6 o'clock. By that point, it's harder to get your work done. So I'm a morning person and I like that training camp happens in the mornings. No, it's a good call. And, yeah, honestly, I remember those Andy Reed training camps. They were the last two. So my first two years with the Eagles were Andy's last two years,

and they were the last two years at Lehigh. And so it was like those early mornings, the mountain, the mountain fog coming down off the mountain out there in Lehigh. Yeah, there was some memories for sure. What's your favorite thing about training camp as a fan? Leave that in the comments below. We will read them. And we will be back leading up to training camp here on the PHLY Eagles show.