Marcus Smith's future is in his hands

By 1:30 Monday afternoon, all the Eagles players, except two, had left the practice fields at the NovaCare Complex. The two who remained were linebackers Connor Barwin and Marcus Smith, and they charged toward and slap-boxed with an orange-padded tackling dummy, honing their pass-rush moves.

Barwin was the teacher, Smith the student. That was to be expected. Barwin led the Eagles with 141/2 sacks last season. Smith, the Eagles' first-round draft pick last year, played just eight games and 74 snaps. After the team's Week 4 loss to the 49ers, in which he fouled up a coverage assignment and allowed running back Frank Gore to catch a touchdown pass, he settled into a routine in his rookie year. Sunday was usually his day to stand on the sideline and do little but watch, his very own Sabbath.

Two days into his second NFL training camp, Smith already has shown some indications that he has committed himself to putting his ineffectual first season behind him. "He's taken big steps," defensive coordinator Bill Davis said Monday. "Best we've seen him look."

He could hardly have looked worse than he did last year. It is one thing for a first-round pick to wait his turn. It is another for a team to refrain from giving him a turn. The Eagles suffered injuries that compromised their depth at linebacker, particularly to DeMeco Ryans and Mychal Kendricks, and they moved Smith to inside linebacker for a while before moving him outside again. But they had so little confidence in him that it was still noteworthy whenever he took the field.

"It was a little bit of everything," Eagles outside linebackers coach Bill McGovern said. "It was the first year coming into the NFL, the physicality of the league, the intensity, the approach, all of it. There was a whole process, the whole gamut that he had to understand, for what it takes to play in this league."

Smith said Monday he understands that process now. He and Barwin plan to work together after every practice for 10 minutes - Barwin sharing some tricks and techniques to help Smith handle offensive linemen who are bigger, faster, and smarter than the ones he faced in college.

It might be hard to remember now, given that he was pretty much a ghost last year, but as a defensive end in his senior season at Louisville, Smith finished second in the nation with 141/2 sacks. Yet he said he found rushing the passer to be the most challenging part of adjusting to the NFL and to his new position.

"We can all jump back into coverage," Smith said. "We're all athletes. We can definitely stop the run. All you have to do is keep a firm edge. But when it comes to the pass rush, you've got these guys who are huge and can move just as good as you. You have to tailor your game. You definitely have to get off the ball faster, use your hands every single time."

The drills with Barwin are a continuation of much of Smith's offseason training. He worked with former Atlanta Falcons defensive end Chuck Smith, who consults with and trains NFL players, pass-rushers in particular. An all-pro in 1997, the elder Smith counseled the younger Smith not to waste one of his greatest advantages: his hands. Marcus Smith's hands are each 10 inches long, sizable even by pro football's standards, as if they were tennis rackets made of muscle and bone.

"He taught me to just be violent with my hands and always use them because they're weapons of destruction," Marcus Smith said. "If I slap somebody, it's going to hurt."

But only if he's strong enough to make it hurt, and Smith needed to change his habits there, too. He needed to exercise some self-discipline. He weighed 253 pounds last season, and the consensus among Davis and Smith's teammates was that he had to get stronger to have any hope of validating the Eagles' decision to draft him. It was a soft 253, and there was a reason. Unable to control his cravings, Smith said Monday, he'd eat fried food three or four times a week, sometimes sneaking out of the NovaCare cafeteria with some. These days, he sticks to grilled foods: fish, chicken, turkey.

"You start asking yourself, 'Are you good enough? Are you good enough to play in the NFL?' " he said. "That's one thing where I had to revert to college. I feel like I'm a great player and I can pass-rush and do all those things. When I came back, I was ready."

What other choice did he have? The Eagles will need someone to back up Barwin and Brandon Graham this season at outside linebacker - especially since Travis Long tore his left ACL at practice Monday, for the second time in a year - and it would be a failure of the highest order to have a first-round pick who couldn't fill even that role. Smith has an opportunity here, maybe his last, a chance to change everyone's mind about him after that lost rookie season, and he'd better grab it with both of those giant hands of his and never let go.

@MikeSielski