Golson Among 26 Tryout Players at Eagles Rookie Camp

PHILADELPHIA (973espn.com) - Give the Eagles credit, they are turning over every stone in an attempt to upgrade the talent level on their roster.

To that end former Notre Dame and Florida State quarterback Everett Golson will highlight a list of 26 invitees who will get an opportunity to earn a shot on Philadelphia's offseason roster when they take part in the team's rookie camp, which will run from Friday through Sunday.

Golson, who was also at the Indianapolis Colts' rookie camp last weekend, once took the Fighting Irish to the national championship game before losing his job to Malik Zaire and making a graduate transfer to Florida State where he was the Seminoles' starter for part of last season.

At 6-foot and just 190 pounds the South Carolina native is undersized by NFL standards but has some dual-threat capabilities that would be desirous to a team that runs a lot of zone-read stuff but with Sam Bradford, Chase Daniel and Carson Wentz already earmarked for the regular-season roster, it's doubtful Golson will be making noise anytime soon in Philadelphia.

The other somewhat familiar name among the tryout players is former Temple offensive tackle Eric Lofton, a 6-foot-5, 300-pound Lumberton, N.J. native who played his college ball on North Broad and hopes to find a new home on the other side of town. Another tackle, Boston College's David Bowen, who hails from Villanova, is the only other local player in on a tryout.

The other 23 tryout players joining the Eagles' for the weekend include RB Khairi Dickson of St. Francis; WRs T.J. Thorpe of Virginia, David Watford of Hampton and Kyle Washington of Angelo State; TEs James Kelly of Marshall and TE M.J. McFarland of UTEP; center Angelo Mangiro of Penn State and OTs Ben Curtis of Delaware.

The defenders on hand will be DEs Kassan Messiah of UMass, Mike Moore of Virginia and Jacob Payne of Shenandoah; North Carolina DT Justin Thomason; LBs Jacob Lindsey of Harvard, LT Filiaga of Utah State, Jovan Santos-Knox of UMass and Tyson Coleman of Oregon; CBs Trenton Coles of Duquesne and Anthony Gaffney of Princeton; safeties Joe Powell of Globe Institute, Demond Smith of Georgia Tech, Jourdan Wickliffe of Eastern Illinois and Cody Culbertson of Ohio Dominican and Texas Tech punter Taylor Symmank, who also has a tryout with the Vikings last weekend.

-John McMullen covers the Eagles and the NFL for 973ESPN.com. You can reach him at jmcmullen44@gmail.com or on Twitter @JFMcMullen