Eagles Rookie Camp: Mychal Kendricks Closing In On A Starting Job

Andy Reid wrapped up the Eagles first rookie camp this morning with a press conference. He addressed the play of a few rookies, but the first he talked about was LB Mychal Kendricks. Reid wasn't ready to commit to Kendricks as his starting SAM, but he said the amount of plays he made over the weekend certainly caught the coaches' eyes.

"We're going to have a staff meeting here and we're going to go over all that stuff. I'll tell you that he looked good out here. He made a lot of plays and got his hands on the ball. We have to see where he gets the most reps, and I have to go through all of that with the coaches and we'll figure it out."

One of the major skills that set Kendricks apart at Cal was his ability to blitz. Reid was asked whether that may lead them install more blitz packages for him?

"[General Manager] Howie [Roseman] and I told you when we took Mychal that it's one of his strengths. He was really good at that in college. You can get a guy coming off the tight end side or the strong side and you feel comfortable with speed, agility, and the ability to adjust to make the tackle when he's moving fast and furious to go forward. You want to exploit that the best you can. It was good to get him introduced to it, and we'll see how he does once we get the pads on."

Since there's no pads or hitting, you can only tell so much about a LB... but one of the things you can evaluate is coverage. For a guy that's only 5-11, the ability to cover a TE is a concern for Kendricks, but in this first camp it didn't seem like a big issue. He had a few big pass breakups.

"He did, he did. He had those two over the middle actually and those are tough because they were against a wide receiver that we were trying to bring across his face. You have to have a little bit of athletic ability to do that."