Landon Dickerson Q&A: Eagles O-lineman on his secret language with Jordan Mailata, lawn fascination, and more
Dickerson and fellow offensive lineman Mailata like to communicate through sounds. "We can finish each other’s sentences a significant amount of time," Dickerson said of their relationship.
On the latest episode of The Inquirer’s Eagles podcast, unCovering the Birds, offensive lineman Landon Dickerson joined host Jeff McLane ahead of Sunday’s game against the Jacksonville Jaguars to talk about his lawn, his secret language with Jordan Mailata, and more.
Here’s an excerpt from McLane’s “Pick Six” with Dickerson, which went a few questions more than six …
Q: You were an Eagle Scout, you even delayed starting college in order to finish your service project. What made you want to become a scout?
A: My dad was an Eagle Scout, and honestly, I really enjoyed it because one, you get to connect with a lot of other kids your age. A lot of those kids I didn’t go to school with, they were from other schools. I think scouting teaches people a lot of good life lessons, not just like, how do you start a fire out in the middle of woods? It’s more things along like teaching people how to problem solve. It may be very specific to what you’re doing in scouting, if you’re camping, you’ve got to do something, but at the end of the day, you don’t have Google when you’re in the woods, sometimes you’ve got to problem solve and figure out how to do something you don’t know. You’ve got to tie something up, and you’ve got to figure out: Which knot do I need? Does it need to be adjustable? Does it need to stay put when I tie it?
Q: Is that why you’re so handy?
A: It definitely plays a part in it. If I’m interested in and want to go do something, I’m going to figure out how to do it. Sometimes it’s trial and error, and sometimes you get it right on the first time. I think that’s a big thing, people just have to go out and do stuff sometimes. If you fail, then you learn from it. I learned it doing the house project, learned it from working on cars. You may not succeed the first time, second time, fifth, sixth, 10th time, but if you just keep messing around and problem solve, you’ll figure it out.
» READ MORE: Sielski: Jalen Hurts and context, Nick Sirianni and calmness, and other self-evident Eagles truths
Q: You ended up donating to a charity that helped a firefighter with stage 4 cancer. How even throughout his treatment, he kept going in to work. It reminds me, obviously, much to a lesser extent, of the fact that you always play through injury, it seems like. Is that the mentality when you think about someone? Like ‘Oh, that’s toughness’ vs. what you do?
A: I’m going be honest, that’s a completely different level. I’ve got way more respect for what first responders, guys like what Brian [Wolnewitz] did, and firefighters, EMS, police officers, people like that. Completely different area of toughness and sacrificing yourself. People might get offended by this, but I play the same game that 5-year-olds play, right? This is football, so it’s an entertainment thing. We put our heart and soul into it, but those people in those professions, they go out there and risk their life to help other people, and I don’t even want to compare, because football and playing through injuries has absolutely nothing on what they do every day.
Q: You have a close friendship with Jordan Mailata, where it seems like you have telepathy, almost. Do you have an off-field example of your connection?
A: We can finish each other’s sentences a significant amount of time. A lot of times we communicate in sounds, which is like a different language, like kids come up with their own language. Sometimes we just make sounds, and we know what different sounds and pitches mean to each other. It’s a little weird, but whether we just speak in like Pig Latin or gibberish, we know exactly what we’re trying to say.
» READ MORE: Eagles locker room: Jordan Mailata on his pregame routine
Q: Do you want to share an example?
A: I don’t even know, because if I do it here without you having any context, it just probably sounds like you just woke up an old man, like a grandpa from a nap.
Q: You’re a big fan of overalls, which are traditionally workwear. Do you wear them when you work? Is that why you like them?
A: It depends on what I’m doing. It’s mainly the accessibility of storage and pockets, and then your pants not falling down. I don’t know if you’ve ever been doing something where you had to have a lot of stuff in your pockets, and then your pants start going down, or if you’re trying to adjust your belt, or whatever it is. The overalls, you never really have to worry about them slacking down, and then you’ve got storage all across your chest. If I’m doing something, I need to put a pencil, pliers, a box cutter, whatever I need, I’m not digging through my pockets. I can just pull it out, mark my line, and cut it.
Q: If I were to want to hire you to do my lawn, what should be the questions I asked you about it?
A: Mowing grass has stuff to do with lawn health, but it’s also the fertilizer, the way you’re treating your yard, so it depends. You can hire companies, they’ll just come out and mow your grass and edge it, pick up leaves and everything. But when it comes down to good-looking grasses, you’ve got to give the grass in the soil what it wants. You can have people come out and take soil samples that’ll tell you, do you need nitrogen? Do you need potassium? Do you need iron to help darken up and make the grass a deep green? You’re just giving your lawn what it’s asking for.
» READ MORE: Newly extended Landon Dickerson loves playing for the Eagles: ‘Hopefully be here my entire career’
Q: Do you have a certain type of grass that you like, or do you ever talk to people from the Eagles about what kind of grass you should have?
A: I can’t have grass like on the field, it’s very low cut. It’s like what you see on golf courses, which has drainage and requires a lot of watering and a lot of maintenance. You’re mowing every day or two, and it’s significantly harder. I don’t have time to do that. I like a fescue mix. I’m still adjusting to cool-season grasses up north, because it’s a little different than warm-season grass down South. Still learning things. You overseed at different times, like, here, it didn’t make sense to me at first, because, you put all your seed out around this time in October, November, towards the end of the season, for it to come in the spring. Down South, it’s in the springtimes. Still making adjustments, and then grass grows a little differently up here. It doesn’t like the heat as much, and drought tolerance, but you can mess with aeration and what type of grass.