Eagles' Training Camp 'Subdued' After Death of Longtime Defensive Coordinator Jim Johnson

BETHLEHEM, Pa. Some things felt very familiar as the Philadelphia Eagles lined up for their training camp practices here this week on a mountainside campus at Lehigh University.

There have been the customary scenes of Coach Andy Reid -- a recently slimmed-down version but still dressed in his usual training camp garb of black T-shirt, black shorts and green-and-white cap -- overseeing an offense led by quarterback Donovan McNabb. They have been the mainstays of a franchise that has accomplished just about everything shy of winning a Super Bowl since Reid was hired in 1999.

Team owner Jeffrey Lurie and President Joe Banner were nearby, as always, offering quiet support while standing unobtrusively to the side. Tailback Brian Westbrook wasn't practicing but performed conditioning drills while Reid looked on between Wednesday's two practices, ready to become a focal point of the offense again once he is fully recovered from offseason ankle surgery.

The Eagles and their fans could look at what was happening on the practice fields at Lehigh and easily envision another run toward that elusive Super Bowl title.

But these weren't the same old Eagles, and the best tangible evidence of that was the letters "JJ" painted in white, with a black circle around them, on the grass behind the corner of an end zone. This Eagles training camp, the participants said, has a completely different feel to it as those in the organization mourn the loss of Jim Johnson, the team's widely respected defensive coordinator who died last week at age 68.

"We all have a bit of sadness, a subdued feeling at a time when you're excited to begin training camp, and that has to do with Jim Johnson," Lurie said Wednesday. "That doesn't just go away."

After an offseason of roster turnover in which the Eagles parted with some significant veteran players -- losing safety Brian Dawkins in free agency, trading cornerback Lito Sheppard and replacing tackles Tra Thomas and Jon Runyan -- the most jarring farewell of all came with the news of Johnson's death. He had been relegated late last season to coaching from a cart, and he had taken an offseason leave of absence while undergoing cancer treatments.

But Johnson's players had only gradually come to realize his condition had deteriorated so severely, veteran safety Quintin Mikell said.

"At the end of last season when he was in a wheelchair, we kind of thought, 'Okay, this is pretty serious,' " Mikell said as he left the practice field Wednesday. "But he'd had surgeries before. He'd had things before. We thought he'd be okay. It wasn't until we found out he had [a recurrence of skin] cancer, and we didn't find that out until later on, we were like, 'That's pretty serious.' And we found out he'd had it before. As I was researching it a little more. . . . I was starting to get worried. Then when he left [the team], that's when I really knew it wasn't good."

For Eagles defenders, the mood of camp has been different.

"The first few days, it was really weird," Mikell said. "It was just a different feeling, even in meetings. You just imagine him still being there. You just think he's gonna walk through the door. You've got to jump back to reality and realize he's not here. Once we got back to the hitting and got the pads on, we really realized Jim would have wanted us to move on and kind of get back to work. For me, it was just really weird."

Reid hired Johnson for his original coaching staff in Philadelphia even though the two hadn't worked together previously, and Johnson became recognized as one of the league's top defensive minds. His blitz packages were regarded as perhaps the sport's most innovative.