Inside Andy Reid’s Unforgettable Three Days of Hell at Lehigh: What Really Happened Behind the Scenes?

1B. And for all the old-school fans who think Nick Sirianni’s training camps don’t have the Eagles prepared for the start of the season, you’re just wrong. Consider this: The Eagles are 9-3 the first three weeks of the season since 2021 under Sirianni, tied with the Bills for best record in the NFL through Week 3. They are ready.

1A. With training camp approaching in a few weeks, it’s wild to think back to Andy Reid’s first few training camps, which would start out with the notorious “Three Days of Hell.” From 1999 through 2003, after a light walkthrough on the first day at Lehigh, Reid would put the team through full-pads, full-contact 2 ½-hour practices twice a day on the grass fields at Lehigh. That was followed by a full-pads morning practice on Day 4 before a walkthrough in the afternoon. That’s 17 ½ hours of full-go in about 51  hours. NFL teams don’t have 17 ½ hours of full pads work in their entire training camp these days. After the 2003 season, the NFL informally asked teams to eliminate full two-a-days, and from then on the afternoon practice alternated between a walkthrough and a special teams practice. And eventually the league banned two-a-days entirely. But those first few years were insane. Constant fights. Players crawling off the field after goal-line drills. Non-stop trash talking. Guys puking on the sidelines. Coaches imploring exhausted rookies to keep grinding. And all of this in front of thousands of fans. I wasn’t around for Dick Vermeil’s endless training camps, but we’ve all heard the horror stories. Buddy Ryan’s camps at West Chester were long and hard and physical, and Buddy would just stand there and twirl his whistle and smirk. But what set Big Red’s apart was that there was such an emphasis on teaching and learning within this setting of excruciating full-contact work. They weren’t just out there beating the crap out of each other, they were actually getting better. There was definitely a method to his madness, although it clearly was madness. Things have changed and those days are gone forever, and watching the way the Eagles practice now, with short, intense workouts and tons of individual drills and classroom and video work, it’s a much safer, healthier and more effective way to prepare for the season. But those Three Days of Hell were sure fun to watch.

8. Craig Finn, frontman for the Hold Steady, screamed, “Go Eagles!” during the band’s set at Brooklyn Bowl on Friday night and was universally corrected by everybody in the crowd. He didn’t realize that’s not what you say. The next night he screamed, “Go Birds,” and was universally cheered. “That’s what I get for pandering,” he said.

7B. Since 1950, Hurts has the most rushing yards by an Eagle who never played for another team at 3,133. Anthony Toney has the most among running backs with 2,294.2. We’ve been talking all offseason about how Nolan Smith really found himself as a pass rusher last year with 10 ½ sacks from Week 6 on, including 4.0 in the postseason, and I’m on the record as saying he’s going to have 12 to 14 sacks this season. But let’s not forget that Smith is one hell of a run defender as well. Just like his mentor, Brandon Graham, he may be under-sized, but his effort against the run is exceptional. Out of 72 edge rushers who played at least 500 snaps last year, Smith’s 74.0 Pro Football Focus run defense grade ranked 13^th, which is outstanding. A lot of edge rushers aren’t interested in playing the run because stopping the run doesn’t get you paid, sacks do. But Smith is committed to being an all-around player. You worry about a guy 245 or 250 selling out against the run, especially as aggressive as Smith is. But you also don’t want to see a guy like Smith change the way he plays. How do you not love the constant intense effort both rushing the passer and playing the run? 

3B. Has anybody in NFL history been as popular as Cooper DeJean before they’ve started 10 regular-season games?

5. Tanner McKee had more touchdown passes in his first two NFL games (four) than Donovan McNabb, Nick Foles, Sonny Jurgensen, Randall Cunningham, Jalen Hurts, Kevin Kolb, Bobby Hoying, A.J. Feeley, Mike Kafka and John Reaves combined (three).4. Spotrac has a cool new feature listing the highest career earnings of NFL players. Pretty funny that the three players who’ve earned the most career money who played for the Eagles are Joe Flacco, Ndamukong Suh and Julio Jones. Flacco is 22^nd all-time with 0,175,063 million in career earnings, Suh is 26^th at 8,165,157 and Jones is 30^th at 9,167,021. Flacco earned ,843,055 of that with the Eagles, Suh earned million as an Eagle and Jones ,041,200. Lane Johnson has earned the most as an Eagle (8,436,625) and is 38^th all-time. (Whatever Lane has earned, it’s not enough.)

10. To fully understand how remarkable Wes Hopkins’ comeback was, you have to understand how serious torn ACLs were back in the mid-1980s. Hopkins tore his left knee against the Rams at the Vet in Week 4 of the 1986 when he ran into teammate Alzono Johnson. He underwent surgery two days later at Paoli Memorial Hospital and didn’t play again for nearly two years. Hopkins missed the rest of 1986 and all of 1987 rehabbing. Wes was fantastic his first three seasons out of SMU. Ferocious tackler, ball hawk, run stuffer. He did it all. Wes had 11 interceptions over the 1984 and 1985 seasons and made the Pro Bowl and 1^st-team all-pro in 1985. He was 26 and one of the few elite players on the Eagles, one of the most promising young safeties in the league. Then he didn’t play football for 707 days. I remember at some point after the 1987 season a bunch of beat writers were summoned down to the Vet to talk to Wes, who at that point was a year and a half into his rehab. He was riding a stationary bike in the tiny weight room off the Eagles’ locker room at the Vet and he was smiling ear to ear at the prospect of playing again in 1988. He finally got back on the field for a preseason game against the Jets at the Vet but looked tentative. Understandable after what he’d been through. Eight days later, in a preseason game against the Steelers at Three Rivers Stadium, he was back to his old self, laying out Rodney Carter after a short catch among other big plays. The Eagles opened the regular season in Tampa, and on the first play of the second quarter – probably his seventh or eighth snap in two years – Hopkins intercepted Vinny Testaverde as the Eagles rolled to a 41-14 win. A week later in a loss to the Bengals at the Vet, Hopkins obliterated tight end Rodney Holman in the first quarter, forcing a fumble that led to a Randall Cunningham TD pass to Keith Jackson, and then early in the third quarter he picked off Boomer Esiason to set up a Dean Dorsey field goal, the first of his career (out of four). In Hopkins’ first two games after a two-year layoff, he forced three turnovers. He finished the season with five INTs and should have made another Pro Bowl as the Eagles reached the playoffs for the first time since 1981. He remained with the Eagles through 1993 and actually wound up with more interceptions after the injury (19) than before it (11). His 30 INTs are still 5^th-most in Eagles history, behind only Eric Allen, Bill Bradley and Brian Dawkins – who each had 34 – and Herm Edwards, who had 33. An all-time great Eagle who inexplicably is not in the Eagles Hall of Fame. Imagine what his career would have looked like if he hadn’t missed two years in his prime? Imagine how many more Pro Bowls and interceptions and all-pros he would have piled up? Even without those two seasons he’s still one of the best defensive backs to wear an Eagles uniform. Wes died in September of 2018, a day after he turned 57. 

6. The Eagles have gone 49 consecutive regular-season games without two cornerbacks recording an interception. But they did it in the conference semifinal win over the Packers, when Darius Slay and Quinyon Mitchell both picked off Jordan Love. Last time two Eagles corners had an INT in the same regular-season game? It was Week 2 in 2022, when Slay and Avonte Maddox both picked off Kirk Cousins in a 24-7 win over the Vikings at the Linc. (For the record, last time it happened in a road game was Week 5 of 2021, when Slay and Steven Nelson both had interceptions off Sam Darnold in a 21-18 win over the Panthers in Charlotte.)

9. Whatever happened to Jason Kelce? That dude’s really just totally disappeared off the face of the Earth since he retired. 

3A. Jordan Davis and Reed Blankenship are the only defensive players on the Eagles’ roster who’ve started as many as 20 games in an Eagles uniform. Davis has 39 starts and Blankenship 34. Next on that list are Nakobe Dean (19) and Zach Baun, Jalen Carter and Quinyon Mitchell (16 each). Then Nolan Smith (10), Cooper DeJean (9), Sydney Brown (6) and Kelee Ringo (5). A look back at Andy Reid’s Three Days of Hell at Lehigh, an under-rated aspect of Nolan Smith’s game and an appreciation of the great Wes Hopkins.

7A. JALEN HURTS STAT OF THE WEEK: Only 14 players in NFL history have had five rushing touchdowns in a single postseason. Only Jalen Hurts has done it twice – in 2022 and 2024. One of the 13 others in history with five rushing TDs in a postseason is Saquon Barkley this past season, which makes the Eagles the only team with two five-TD guys in the same postseason.  Nobody else in Eagles history has ever had more than three. Wilbert Montgomery, Brian Westbrook and LeGarrette Blount had three, and Donovan McNabb, Montgomery, Miles Sanders and Boston Scott had two. 

There’s something about the brutal baptism of Andy Reid’s early training camps at Lehigh that sticks with you — those days when players weren’t just getting ready, they were getting hammered into shape under a relentless sun, full pads clashing for hours on end. It was raw, it was ruthless, and yet beneath the spectacle of gritted teeth and spilled guts was a methodical effort to build champions. Fast-forward to today’s sleek, video-equipped sessions, and you’d hardly recognize the madness. But the legacy? Oh, it lingers. Meanwhile, Nolan Smith is quietly redefining what it means to be a versatile edge rusher, blending tenacity against the run with sack-hungry prowess that’s bound to shake up the season’s leaderboard. And how about Wes Hopkins — a titan whose comeback from a devastating ACL injury in an era when such hits often ended careers remains one of the most inspiring chapters in Eagles lore. As the calendar flips closer to training camp, Roob’s latest dive into offseason quirks and insights unwraps these stories and more, reminding us that in football, as in life, grit and growth never go out of style. LEARN MORE

Roob’s 10 Random Offseason Observations rolls through the summer with training camp just a few weeks away.