Eagles’ Shaun Bradley has a message for kids at his camp: ‘Never stop believing’

Eagles linebacker Shaun Bradley hopes that the youngsters who participated in his football camp Saturday left with one message.

“Never stop believing in what you want,” Bradley said. “Just believe in yourself. To show them somebody can do it, somebody around this area, the same place they are in — I wanted to show them they have a way out.”

The Mount Holly native held his second annual free camp for children between the ages of 7 and 18. Community members gathered in the football stands at Rancocas Valley Regional High School to watch kids participate in one-on-one, ladder, and tackling drills on the field.

“It was a great turnout,” Bradley said. “We had a lot of kids. People in the neighborhood or the community just come out, everybody gets to be around each other, so it was a great thing. I’m definitely going to keep doing it as much as I can.”

While playing for Rancocas Valley, Bradley was an under-recruited college prospect. He received an offer from Temple late in his senior year in 2015, but all the scholarships were filled.

Bradley “grayshirted” for his first year, enrolling at the start of the second semester and becoming part of Temple’s 2016 signing class. Proving himself at Temple under former head coaches Matt Rhule, Geoff Collins, and Rod Carey, Bradley earned a single-digit uniform number, an award recognizing the toughest players, by his junior season in 2018.

He was selected by the Eagles in the sixth round of the 2020 NFL draft. Since then, he has become a key member of the special teams as a second-string linebacker.

Eagles training camp begins July 26. Bradley said the linebacking corps is competitive with the additions of Nakobe Dean and Kyzir White. They’ve been working together with one similar goal, he added.

“To win a ring,” Bradley said. “I don’t sell my team short to nothing else. For myself, I want the same thing. Whatever I can do to help the team win, that’s what I’m going to do.”

When Bradley looks back at the adversity he overcame to get to the NFL, he hopes to inspire young players from South Jersey that they can succeed, too.

“This is where I grew up, this is what made me who I am,” Bradley said. “This whole community, this whole area, all these people mean everything.”