Offensive line -- What goes around...

Last year, the Eagles had a miraculous lack of offensive ine injuries, all the way up until late in the second half of the New Orleans playoff game when Shawn Andrews went down with a neck ailment. But during the just-ended training camp, the O line was one of the most frequent victims of those nagging hurts that can often extend into the season. Andrews is out with a very worrisome ankle sprain, Jon Runyan had to leave practice one morning late last week with back pain, and Scott Young suffered a knee sprain, though he was back on the field the very next day.

For that and other reasons -- one of which being the fact that it's hard to see what actually goes on in the trenches -- I have little idea what's going on with the offensive line. I know that Runyan and William Thomas are anchors o the outside, that Andrews and Todd Herremans and Jamaal Jackson are locks to be back as starters as long as theyre healthy. I also have a vague notion that Max Jean-Gilles impressed enough to the point where coaches may have him compete with Youn to be the Andrews insurance. But what kind of camp did Winston Justice have? Who knows. Pat McCoy? Even less idea.

As I've said before, at some point the Eagles need to figure out if guys like Justice and Jean-Gilles and so forth can actualy play in the NFL. For the first time in a while the team did not draft an offensive lineman, so perhaps they recognized the backlog of youngsters that this peskily rampant health has created. William Thomas said he wants to play till hes 85 or somesuch, but realistically, they need to know if Justice is their left tackle of the future. I think, for that reason, we'll be seeing a ton of those young offensive linemen during the upcoming preseason campaign.