Chip Kelly sings Rasheed Bailey's praises

There's a special kind of enthusiasm that comes with playing for your hometown team. Even if his chances of making the final roster are nearly nonexistent, wide receiver Rasheed Bailey is doing his best to make the Eagles notice him.

"My attitude from Day 1 was not to expect anything," the Roxborough High (Pa.) product said. "You've got to come in here and you've got to work hard every single day to be what you want to be."

The deficit between what he wants to be and what he'll likely end up as may have gotten smaller after a solid performance in training camp and the Eagles' two preseason games.

It's safe to say he's learned something.

"The OTAs definitely helped me," Bailey said. "Being around Jordan Matthews, I can't stress his name enough. I've spent a lot of time with him just learning. Learning the play signals and just learning and learning and learning."

He snagged an 18 yard reception from Tim Tebow in his first contest, playing entirely from the slot position, and his after-the-catch yardage is something that will endear him to Chip Kelly's way of thinking.

"I thought coming in here that it may be a little bit too big for him just because, [he was] coming from Delaware Valley, he's kind of handled everything really well," Kelly said. "First game in the Linc or first two games in the Linc, I thought he's shown up in both games. He works extremely hard at it, has a great work ethic. We knew that. But then what you don't know when you have players like that is, is the game going to be too big for him? But he has the skillset to play, and I think he's shown us that."

Kelly will probably keep six receivers on the 53-man roster (Matthews, Nelson Agholor, Josh Huff, Riley Cooper, Miles Austin, and Seyi Ajirotutu). The most likely destination, then, for Bailey is the practice squad, a place from which he'll seek to gain experience in the place he says the game is played the most: the head.

"In this league, the game is 90 percent mental," he said. "The way you play this game, you have to be smart. Being in the room with Miles Austin, that guy is smart. And if I can learn from him and other older players how they about things, it's going to be a beautiful thing."