PHILADELPHIA — You can add Cornelius Ingram to the list of people who weren’t surprised the Eagles’ rookie tight end needed a second ACL repair.

“No, not really, sad to say,” Ingram, a fifth-round pick from Florida, said Thursday.
Ingram was an early camp phenom, big and fast with excellent hands, who seemed to be playing his way into a role complementing Brent Celek. But late in the second week at Lehigh, the knee that had caused Ingram to miss his senior college season (and plummet in the draft) started swelling, and a week or so after that, Ingram was visiting Dr. James Andrews in Alabama.
The thing was, as the Philadelphia Daily News reported on Aug. 17, two league sources said some teams had concerns over the state of Ingram’s original repair — performed by a Florida team orthopedist — going into the draft, even though the Eagles said his tests looked fine to them.
“My agent (Drew Rosenhaus) told me after the combine that some teams felt there was a problem, either with the original surgery or something right after,” Ingram said Thursday. Ingram said he had worked diligently to prove he was ready for the draft and, “I couldn’t have surgery again right then.”
Had he gone under the knife for the second time in six months, he might not have been drafted at all. Ingram decided to cross his fingers and hope. The Eagles took a fifth-round gamble — which might yet pay off, given the skills Ingram showed before he went down — and Ingram told reporters his knee was fine, right up until the day he left Lehigh to get it operated on again.
Ingram is out for the season.