June 09, 2015
Earl Wolff continues to miss OTA practices with a knee injury, and Chip Kelly has done nothing in the way of defending the third-year safety. He answered a question about Wolff's status rather bluntly.
"Earl has done nothing except stretch," said Kelly. "There is not progress right now... He was cleared by Dr. (James) Andrews a couple weeks ago, but it's what he can tolerate, so..."
Ouch. Meanwhile, Kelly was effusive in his praise of corner-turned-safety Walter Thurmond.
"Walt's done a really nice job. He's probably been the most productive guy in the secondary in terms of pass breakups and strips and things like that. He always seems to be around the ball. He seems like he's fitting in there right now. But again, we still don't have pads on, we're still evaluating guys in helmets and shorts and t-shirts, but he's been very productive since he's been in there."
Thurmond's stock is up, Wolff's is way down.
Thurmond revealed the not-so-surprising reason why the Eagles moved him to safety.
"They came right before OTAs and said that they wanted me to move to safety," said Thurmond. "They felt like that was a bigger need for them than the corner position, especially after drafting three guys."
Meanwhile, Wolff was left to answer questions about Dr. Andrews' prognosis.
"When they said 'cleared,' it wasn't like, I'm cleared to go 100 percent," said Wolff. "What Dr. Andrews said was, 'Earl, I did microfracture surgery because your knee was rubbing bone to bone. I did a microfracture surgery, and my goal was to make sure it wasn't touching bone to bone anymore.' So when I went out there, probably about a month, month and a half ago, basically he said, 'You know Earl, basically what I tried to get done is done. So now you can push yourself because basically the procedure that I tried to get done was basically fulfilled, so now you can go out there, now you can really progress. You can really push yourself now.' So it wasn't like I'm cleared to go 100 percent out there and practice 100 percent, no. It wasn't one of those clears."
Wolff said he would be 100 percent by training camp. He'll have to make it there first.
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