Have the coaches had much to say about him?
You don't want to make the same mistake you did with Villanueva
Mike Groh our OC recently said they were very pleased with how he's progressing and impressive with attention to detail. They say his technique is improving every day. The feeling with the beat writers is he's going to make the team.
Re:Villanueva
Different situation, we still had JP who clearly had many years left in him, and we had drafted Johnson the year before (maybe that same year?) so our tackle situation was pretty much set in stone for the next 3-4 years at least when we had Villanueva... also he came to us as a DE, and wasnt very good... the credit for him belongs to the Steelers for immediately making him a OT and developing him there
But i think it is something the eagles will think about, it took Villanueva 12 months on a practise squad, and another year on the active roster before he was ready to be a starter. And even then his first half of the season was pretty ordinary.
Thats 2 years of effort for the steelers to get him where he is, and he'd played football before, Mailata seems to be progressing really quickly but i think that tells you how far this thing still has to go. He's the old "a year away from being a year away" imo. But if they can justify keeping him on the team, and getting him 2nd team reps and keep learning, that's going to be huge for his development
