As has been the theme of the Eagles 2012 offseason so far, the opening of the full camp at Lehigh was pretty much drama free. No one is holding out or threatening to. There are no new injuries that we didn't know about. Obviously the Mike Patterson injury is a concern, but even that wasn't anything we weren't previously aware of.
Andy Reid said today that he was happy to have everyone in on time and happy.
"Having everybody here is a plus, just from a continuity and team camaraderie standpoint. There are less distractions, right, so I think it's absolutely a plus. I'm glad the league worked all that out and that it is set up the way it is today."
The new CBA allows for much larger fines for players under contract that decide to hold out. Even though there doesn't seem to be a likely holdout on this Eagles team, the affect of the new CBA is obviously not lost on Andy.
It will be interesting to see how the new penalties affect other teams around the league. News broke today that Maurice Jones-Drew will not report to Jaguars camp and is in search of a new contract. You'd have to guess he's got his eye on some of that money guys LeSean McCoy and Matt Forte got this offseason.
As our Jaguars writer Alfie Crow points out, Jones-Drew could be forced to fork over $30k for every day of camp he misses. That's more than $200k a week. Even for a guy like Drew, who is actually making big money already, that's a tough pill to swallow.