The defense will have to lay off Carson Wentz, but everybody else is fair game this spring.
It was last year in spring football when there seemingly were more starters held out than starters on the field. It was a result of two things: a lot of “maintenance” type surgeries that several players underwent — like bad shoulders — and a group of players that played the equivalent of four seasons worth of games in three years. They almost were approaching NFL-length seasons. So the coaching staff made the decision that even veterans who were somewhat healthy were going to be held out of contact drills.
Here was the inactive list for the 2014 annual Spring Game: C.J. Smith, Adam Keller, Colten Heagle, King Frazier, Jedre Cyr, Carlton Littlejohn, Travis Beck, Alex Hahn, Zack Johnson, Nate Moody, DeSean Warren and Luke Albers. A few other veterans hardly played at all in that game. The inactive list for the 2013 game was worse: Trevor Gebhart, Ryan Smith, Zach Colvin, Cooper Wahlo Jr., Derek McGinnis, Colten Heagle, John Crockett, Joey Blackmore, Darius Anderson, Francisco Hardacker, Tyler Gefroh, Ryan Drevlow, Josh Colville, Jason Pomerenke, DeSean Warren, Kevin Vaadeland, Taylor Nelson, Brett Pierce, Cole Jirik and Austin Farnlof.
I don’t get the sense that is the case this year and evidence of that is the number of players who are not going live in Saturday’s first intrasquad scrimmage. One. And that would be quarterback Carson Wentz, who probably given the choice would prefer to go live but head coach Chris Klieman is not about to mess with his franchise player. “We will not have him live all spring,” he said, with an obvious-statement tone to his voice. Interesting, however, that backup quarterbacks Cole Davis and Easton Stick are going full boat, something that hasn’t happened in recent years. These scrimmages always meant the quarterbacks wore the red jersey (or in the case of the Spring Game a white jersey), meaning two-hand touch on them.
That backup quarterback battle will most likely go into fall camp. If pressed now, Klieman would probably go with Davis because of the number of reps he’s had in the last two years. “But Easton’s athleticism is so intriguing,” Klieman said, “that we want to see him in a scrimmage situation. We’ll have those two quarterbacks in particular live in the spring, which we haven’t done in the past.”
