Monday, April 27, 2009

Eagles sign 9 Rookie Free Agents

Just because the draft is over doesn't mean the Eagles are done bringing in rookies! As soon as the draft ends, teams hit the phones to try to sign players that went undrafted. Occasionally, teams find a diamond in the rough, most often these players are the first cuts in training camp. Here are the undrafted rookies the Eagles have signed so far:

Josh Gaines, DE, Penn State
--Defensive co-captain at Penn State had 8.5 sacks in college

Reshard Langford, S, Vanderbilt
--4 year starter, racked up 247 tackles and 8 picks

Marcus Mailei, FB, Weber State
--Competition for Leonard Weaver, good receiver out of the backfield

Walter Mendenhall, RB, Illinois State
--Younger brother of Steeler Rashard Mendenhall, will be lucky to stick as practice squad player

Dallas Reynolds, OG, BYU
--I wonder why the Eagles signed someone from BYU? Has played all 5 positions on the offensive line

Brandon Robinson, WR, Boston College
--Gained over 2000 yards at BC

Courtney Robinson, CB, UMass
--May have potential as a darkhorse candidate for returning kicks since he is the UMass all-time leader in kickoff return yards

Sam Swank, K, Wake Forest
--David Akers always needs to have some competition to keep him working hard

Marcus Thigpen, RB, Indiana
--Another player with kick return potential, is third in Indiana history with 4,658 all-purpose yards

None of these players jump out at as college studs, although if you watched Penn State at all this year you remember Gaines. Including the draft, the Eagles got a nice mix of multiple players at nearly every position, except for on the defensive line, where they only added Gaines. Clearly the Birds feel set there since they also didn't draft any D-linemen, a rarity for them.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"The Eagles got a nice mix of players at every position, except for on the defensive line." Not to nitpick but last time I checked DE was still a position on the defensive line.

allthingsphilly said...

Yeah, true, I think I meant to say they got multiple players from every spot except defensive line. Thanks!

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