Another Eagles training camp begins Tuesday when all Eagles are expected to report to the NovaCare Complex. The first practice officially kicks off at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

Camp practices are much different these days than when I first started covering the Eagles in 2005 – exactly 20 years ago. And I remember the beats back then telling he how different camp was from 20 years before, when NFL teams played seven preseason games and camp started way earlier than mid-July.

I’m finally enough “of a certain age” to write about how much different camp was when I started covering the team, back when the Eagles held two practices each day – the first starting around 8 a.m. – on the football fields at Lehigh University. Back when rookies and selected veterans were first to report in the middle of the week for a three-day minicamp before veterans arrived. Back when the pads came out the first weekend.

Nowadays, most teams don’t go away for camp and more teams by the year are favoring shorter practices with less contact. The Eagles are one of those teams that stays at their own facility and holds just one practice per day that can range from 45 minutes to two hours – not to mention the several built-in “off days” that dot the first three weeks of the schedule.

In the spirit of being older, here’s a look at some of the most memorable camp moments over the past 20 years:

The Hank Baskett uprising 

I was one-year late to one of the greatest Lehigh legends ever – the July day in 2004 when thousands of fans flocked to Lehigh to catch their first glimpse of new Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens.  The stories of traffic lines congesting the roads and highways around the campus are legendary.

But two summers later, months after T.O. had been banished from the team, the Eagles were so desperate for any kind of tall, physical presence opposite free-agent receiver Donte Stallworth – and so miffed at the lack of development from Billy McMullen – that they made the rare midcamp trade to flip McMullen to the Vikings for some 6-foot-4, 220-pound undrafted rookie out of New Mexico that nobody ever heard of until the trade.

You can imagine our shock when Hank Baskett actually played like T.O. for a few weeks of camp, plucking ball out of the air, high-pointing Donovan McNabb throws 30 yards downfield, catching practically everything thrown his way. Baskett made it seem like Andy Reid had just stolen a superstar from his old buddy Brad Childress. Baskett made the 53-man roster and started five games that year but of course he only caught 22 passes and didn’t look anything close to the dude who was embarrassing DBs on the regular at Lehigh. That’s what made him such a Lehigh legend.

Jason Kelce’s emergence

In 2011, the Eagles drafted some chubby dude who played center at Cincinnati in the sixth round of the draft. They said they liked his athleticism and that he kinda, sorta reminded new offensive line coach Howard Mudd of Jeff Saturday, an undrafted and undersized center that Mudd molded into a six-time Pro Bowler with the Colts. Other than that, nobody thought much of the pick. Then one day very early in camp at Lehigh, Kelce took some first-team snaps in place of Jamaal Jackson. 

I remember tweeting that it must be a “maintenance day off,” which Andy Reid was known to give his linemen and thirtysomethings. Jackson must have seen my tweet. After practice, he texted me that it was certainly not a maintenance day and that Kelce would soon be the starter. I laughed and thought Jackson was just being paranoid. You’d be amazed by how paranoid some players are about losing their jobs to backups, no matter how accomplished they are. 

Turns out, Jackson wasn’t exaggerating. Mudd was enacting his plan to make wholesale changes to the Eagles’ offensive line, starting with Kelce’s easing into the center job. Pretty soon, Kelce would become the first-team center and start for the third preseason game – back then, starters played their most snaps in the third preseason game – and Jackson spent 2011 as Kelce’s backup before being released the following March.

Mike Patterson’s sudden collapse

Not all memories from Lehigh are fond ones. In fact, there were a bunch of moments I’d like to forget, including the morning we learned that Andy Reid’s son had died of an overdose in his Lehigh dorm. Those are times when it’s tough to wear the reporter’s cap – especially as father myself – and write the necessary stories. There wasn’t a dry eye among the organizational figures who spoke to the media that day.

But one of the worst moments to witness live was defensive tackle Mike Patterson’s August, 2011, collapse into a seizure in the middle of a practice at Lehigh. It was all a blur. The big guy just fell to the ground, started to convulse and next thing you know the entire field was filled with medical personnel, ambulances and teammates kneeling and praying. 

Within minutes, every major sports news organization was breaking from its routine programming to cover Patterson’s sudden collapse. My phone kept blowing up – ESPN, sports radio stations, anyone and everyone trying to figure out what had just happened. But so were we. There wasn’t anything we knew of in Patterson’s medical history that would suggest something like this would happen. 

Amazingly, Patterson returned to the field 10 days later. He was diagnosed with brain AVM (or arteriovenous malformation), a prenatal condition in which blood travels abnormally between the arteries and veins. Somehow, he started 15 games that year and underwent a brain surgery after the season that kept him out almost all of 2012.

Tom Brady’s perfection 

Some memories from past Eagles camp were made by players who weren’t Eagles. I’ve seen some really good passing performances at camp during my time but never anything like August, 2013, when Tom Brady and the Patriots came to South Philly for a couple of joint practices leading up to their preseason game at the Linc. This was Chip Kelly’s first year as head coach and the team’s first year holding camp at NovaCare instead of Lehigh.

Kelly inherited a secondary that had really struggled in Reid’s last season, but Brady made Eagles DBs look like they should hang up the cleats on the spot. He carved up Billy Davis’ defense like it was Thanksgiving turkey. I didn’t chart QB throws those days but I’m pretty sure I would only need one hand to count the number of balls that hit the ground for the Patriots over the two-day span, and it’s not like Brady was throwing to All-Pros. No Gronk (injury). No Aaron Hernandez (jail). No Welker. Brady painted the field with guys named Kenbrell Thompkins, Zach Sudfeld and Aaron Dobson. Just amazing. The greatest display of quarterbacking I’ve ever seen at camp, by far.

The near-tornado

Weather isn’t as concerning anymore with the Eagles at NovaCare and practices mostly in the morning. If it rains, they just go inside the bubble. But at Lehigh, some time in the late 2000s when tweeting and blogging became a thing, the PR folks set up a climate-controlled, Wifi-equipped “blogging” trailer for the media alongside the practice fields so reporters didn’t have to trek back to a dorm room or downtown restaurant to get their instant practice observations posted.

Funny thing about trailers, though. They can get a little wobbly when dark clouds and gusty winds blow in, which tends to happen on August afternoons in the Lehigh Valley. There was one storm that slowly crept toward the media trailer, with clouds swirling in a way that suggested a potential tornado. By the time the storm got close enough to feel, I wasn’t sure I’d make it out of the trailer. I decided to make a run for it to my car, which was about 300 yards away in a parking lot surrounded by trees. The trailer stayed intact that day, but I wasn’t chancing it. I was soaked and exhausted by the time I reached my car, my notebook was all but destroyed, but I was alive – and that’s all that mattered.

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