INDIANAPOLIS _ One of the Eagles' top offseason priorities _ maybe their top offseason priority _ even ahead of adding speed at wide receiver and finding some trustworthy cornerbacks and improving their pass rush, is figuring out how to reduce the number of injuries they've been hit with the last two years.
They've replaced members of their medical and training staffs and are examining every aspect of their football operation, from the types of cleats their players wear to the stretching they do before practices and games, their weightlifting regimen, their calcium intake, and their family medical histories.
They intend to approach both free agency and the draft much more conservatively than in the past with respect to injuries.
Previously, they've been willing to take chances on players coming off injuries because it allowed them the opportunity to get some bargains, including cornerback Sidney Jones, a top-15 player they got in the second round of the 2017 draft because he had torn an Achilles tendon before the draft.
The problem is, that doesn't do them much good late in the season when that player is on injured reserve or rehabbing a hamstring strain. The same goes for older injury-prone players like DeSean Jackson.
At both his postseason news conference and again last week at the scouting combine, general manager Howie Roseman trotted out the "hope is not a strategy when it comes to injuries" line.
"When you bring guys in that are injured," Roseman said in January, "it obviously increases the risk that they will get hurt again."
While the Eagles obviously were paying close attention to the 40-yard dash times of the wideouts and cornerbacks at the NFL scouting combine last week, the two most important aspects of the combine for them were the medical examinations and the player interviews.
The Eagles are expected to remove a lot more players from their draft board this year than before for medical and off-the-field reasons.
A good example is Colorado wide receiver Laviska Shenault who is projected as a first- or second-round pick. But after running a 4.58-second 40 at the combine, it was revealed that he had a core muscle injury. He had surgery over the weekend and is looking at a 6-to-8-week rehab. But given the Eagles' recent history with core injuries � DeSean Jackson, Mack Hollins � there is a good chance they will remove Shenault from their draft board, or at least move him down a round or two.
"To sit there and think that something is automatically going to change and you're going to change a person _ either their character or their (medical) history _ is a big risk," Roseman said. "If you're going to do something like that, the resource you put into it, you've got to be willing to say there's a good chance this won't work out.
"We have to learn from it, and maybe for a period of time, go back to studying, especially when we have new (medical and training) people here, and figuring out what kind of injuries we're good at figuring out and what are the things that translate going forward instead of sitting here and thinking we have all the answers. That hasn't worked.
"As we look to this offseason and this draft class, the amount of resources we put into those types of guys will be very little."
