Update: Eagles release Travis Long after long battle with knee injuries

Update: The Eagles released linebacker Travis Long Wednesday morning.

From Tuesday:

Travis Long was listed as a third-year player, which is both technically true and a cruel taunt.

Long has been here since the 2013 training camp, when he impressed coaches as a 3-4 outside linebacker. He was an undrafted rookie with size (6-4, 255) and talent, available after the draft because he was coming off a late-season right ACL tear at Washington State. Long went on to spend 2013 on the Eagles' practice squad, setting him up as a first-year player in 2014, under the NFL's rules.

But in the fourth quarter of 2014's final preseason game, with a job as the Birds' top sub linebacker and a core special-teams guy pretty much wrapped up, Long tore his left ACL. He spent that season - his first in the league, by the NFL's reckoning - on injured reserve.

Last year, camp was just getting started when it happened again, the freshly healed left ACL tearing Aug. 3, the second day of full-squad practices.

Long called his wife, Sarah, who was flying back to Washington state from Philly. She landed to find several messages from family and friends. When they finally connected, Long recalls telling her, "I don't know if I can do this again, babe."

"She was like, 'You can do anything you want to,' " Long said Tuesday, after practicing with 37 other rookies and select vets, his left leg wrapped in a black sleeve and brace.

Giving up on football "definitely crossed my mind," Long acknowledged. "You don't go through this three times and not question yourself, question the process."

The fact that the Eagles chose to put him on injured reserve (giving him a second NFL "season") and supervise his recovery while paying him, instead of seeking an injury settlement, "meant a lot to me," Long said. "I thought that meant they thought I could get back to where I was. So that's just really all I tried to focus on, is just, at the end of all this, just trying to have a healthy knee, and just go from there."

There is precedent. Carolina linebacker Thomas Davis has torn the same ACL three times, most recently in 2011; he was named first-team All-Pro and was a huge piece of a Super Bowl team last season. And of course, Long talks regularly with Sam Bradford, whose back-to-back torn ACLs led him to the Eagles in 2015.

"It's kinda rare, but why not?" Long said.

But now Long is playing for coaches who have never actually seen him on the field, full speed in pads, in a 4-3 scheme that he hasn't played or practiced in since high school. Plus, after tearing the repaired left knee less than a year into recovery, he had to take rehab slower this time.

Last year, he said he thinks he was too impatient, pushed too hard. Long reinjured his knee in a special-teams drill in which he wasn't wearing his restrictive brace. Now, he guesses he'll just have to figure out how to get the job done with the brace firmly attached.

"It's going to take a while just to get back in football shape," said Long, 25, who flashed instincts and quickness in breaking up a slant Tuesday. "The coverage is the same, it's just how you get to that coverage. Instead of being on the line of scrimmage, I'm 5 yards back."

Long seemed perturbed after the ball bounced away.

"I got my hands on it. Gotta catch the thing," he said. "I got my hands on one yesterday, too. I just gotta catch the football again."

Long has found himself in a different place emotionally each time he has had to look down at a fresh surgical scar.

"Every time I did it, it's been different," he said. "The first time, I was like, 'Am I ever going to play football again? Is anybody going to give me a chance to play football again?' Second time, it's like, 'Alright, screw this, I'm getting back, I'm playing again.' Last time, it's just like, 'Bleep, can I do this again?' Eventually it all turned around and I got my mind right."

Eagles veterans report Wednesday with the first full-squad practice scheduled for Thursday . . . There aren't any draftees among the receivers on the roster of rookies and select vets practicing now, and you could tell that Tuesday, as passes clanked off hands repeatedly . . . New defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz advised his linebackers to remove their heads from their nether regions, more or less, during 7-on-7 drills Tuesday. Schwartz might be fun to have around.