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Riley Cooper is back at Eagles camp after excused absence

Riley Cooper was excused from team activities last Friday and told to seek counseling. (Matt Rourke/AP) ESPN’s Chris Mortensen was the first reporter to drop

Doug Farrar

Riley Cooper is back at Eagles camp after excused absence
Riley Cooper is back at Eagles camp after excused absence /

Riley Cooper was excused from team activities last Friday and told to seek counseling. (Matt Rourke/AP)

Riley Cooper was excused from team activities last Friday and told to seek counseling.

ESPN’s Chris Mortensen was the first reporter to drop this bombshell from the Philadelphia Eagles’ training camp:

Per Albert Breer of the NFL Network, Cooper’s re-emergence took many by surprise. He met with team officials at the NovaCare Complex facility, and will reportedly participate in practice and be available to the media after.

Cooper, of course, was excused from all team activities last Friday and told to seek counseling after he was caught making a racial slur at a Kenny Chesney concert in June. Cooper practiced with the team just once after the video went viral last Wednesday.

“This is all new territory and we are going to evaluate this timetable every step of the way,” the Eagles said in a statement last Friday. "He will meet with professionals provided by the Eagles during this period of time to better help him understand how his words have hurt so many, including his teammates."

To add a little spice to this, the Eagles will be taking part in a joint practice with the New England Patriots today, which will make this the first time Tim Tebow’s ever been on a football field without anyone paying attention to him. Oh, wait -- silly us. Tebow was Cooper’s quarterback at Florida, so he’s in for a media scrum of his own.

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"The last few days have been incredibly difficult for me," Cooper said in a statement before leaving the team. "My actions were inexcusable. The more I think about what I did, the more disgusted I get. I keep trying to figure out how I could have said something so repulsive, and what I can do to make things better.

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Doug Farrar
DOUG FARRAR

SI.com contributing NFL writer and Seattle resident Doug Farrar started writing about football locally in 2002, and became Football Outsiders' West Coast NFL guy in 2006. He was fascinated by FO's idea to combine Bill James with Dr. Z, and wrote for the site for six years. He wrote a game-tape column called "Cover-2" for a number of years, and contributed to six editions of "Pro Football Prospectus" and the "Football Outsiders Almanac." In 2009,  Doug was invited to join Yahoo Sports' NFL team, and covered Senior Bowls, scouting combines, Super Bowls, and all sorts of other things for Yahoo Sports and the Shutdown Corner blog through June, 2013. Doug received the proverbial offer he couldn't refuse from SI.com in 2013, and that was that. Doug has also written for the Seattle Times, the Washington Post, the New York Sun, FOX Sports, ESPN.com, and ESPN The Magazine.  He also makes regular appearances on several local and national radio shows, and has hosted several podcasts over the years. He counts Dan Jenkins, Thomas Boswell, Frank Deford, Ralph Wiley, Peter King, and Bill Simmons as the writers who made him want to do this for a living. In his rare off-time, Doug can be found reading, hiking, working out, searching for new Hendrix, Who, and MC5 bootlegs, and wondering if the Mariners will ever be good again.

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