When the Eagles hired Doug Pederson this offseason, they officially took themselves out of the running for HBO’s “Hard Knocks.” As a refresher, if your team falls under any of these three conditions, you have the right to say no to HBO and the NFL:
- You appeared in the playoffs in the past two seasons.
- You appeared on “Hard Knocks” sometime in the past 10 years.
- You have a first-year head coach.
Since the Eagles don’t fall under the first two conditions, they needed a new head coach to avoid the possibility “Hard Knocks.” And if Chip Kelly were still here in Philadelphia, you would imagine that HBO would’ve thought long and hard about filming at the NovaCare Complex.
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The team that HBO settled on is the Los Angeles Rams, who are returning to the West Coast and practicing at UC Irvine for training camp. In the team’s first meeting, head coach Jeff Fisher gives his players two rules. The first one is to be on time, and for the second one, let’s go to the transcript:
“Two, no guests in the room under any circumstances. We’re coming back for the next two years to camp here. You don’t want to come back to camp with a three-month old watching you at practice.”
OK then. 10 minutes later in the episode, a player was caught with a woman in his room. And Fisher decided to make an example of him on premium cable:
That player is Deon Long, who will be suiting up for the Eagles tonight at Lincoln Financial Field. Later in a dramatic speech to the team, Fisher called Jones’ decision to break one of his rules “7-9 [bull#$!%].” If there’s anyone that knows all about 7-9, it’s Jeff Fisher.
So now you know why Deon Long was available to the Eagles in the middle of training camp.
In other “Hard Knocks” developments related to the Eagles, here’s Fisher releasing Nick Foles:
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