He has already blended in with the rest of the defensive linemen, the ones who go quietly about their business on a day-to-day routine, who generally stay out of the limelight and who grind through the practice regiman and classroom work. Trevor Laws has made the jump, and he has come through unscathed, thank you very much.

"It's going great," he says. "I feel like I'm well on my way from a technical standpoint. I have to keep working at it and I have to get a lot better, but nothing I've seen has been overwhelming or anything like that."

Not a first Eagles pick in recent memory has moved around as quietly as Laws, the team's opening selection in April's draft roller coaster. He is almost, to the public's eye, lost in the shuffle of all the personnel moves the team made in the off-season. Laws, though, has a chance to make as major a first-year impact as any of the team's players in this decade.

There is a very large, very important role awaiting Laws, should he prove ready to accept it. The Eagles, who keep hammering away at that defensive line, hoping to get it just where they want it, have Mike Patterson (Round 1, 2005) and Brodrick Bunkley (Round 1, 2006) in line to start at defensive tackle. They hope that Laws, the 47th player selected in April's draft, can step right in and play as the third tackle, the swing player, to give Patterson and Bunkley some rest and still have a productive, aggressive, fast group up front.

"I'm not thinking about that," says Laws. "I'm just taking it day by day. That's the advice I have gotten, and I know it is the right way to approach it. Just get better every day and everything will be fine."

That's how Laws truly is. He is a nose-to-the-grindstone kind of kid. He seems, outwardly for sure, unfazed by everything that has gone on around him since the Eagles plucked him from Notre Dame. It helps that Laws and former Fighting Irish teammate Victor Abiamiri are hip-to-hip most of the time they are not on the practice field. Laws has a sense of what to expect and he has a maturity, very much like Abiamiri, of what it takes to reach where he wants to be.

Good thing, because the Eagles kinda, sorta, definitely need Laws to produce as a rookie. While Bunkley was a first-round pick and heralded as an immediate-impact player, his first season was sidetracked by a long delay in his contract and then a way-too-late reporting date to training camp. Bunkley showed up in, uh, not prime football shape and no matter how many sprints he ran after practice at Lehigh University on those hot summer days, he could not get back the time he lost. As a result, Bunkley was a rookie-year bust.

Laws is on his way in the right direction. Of course, he needs to take care of the contract side of things in a timely fashion and he needs to make sure that the five weeks away between the end of the June Organized Team Activities and the start of training camp, July 21, is spent preparing for work, not taking a vacation.

When the pads go on, the chance for playing time is right there, waiting to be won. The Eagles have some questions at defensive tackle, quite honestly. They're in a really good position with Patterson and Bunkley, who form from this perspective one of the better starting tackle tandems in the NFC, at least. Much depends on the anticipated next-level leap for Bunkley, who showed flashes of his enormous upside last season. But, if all goes according to plan, Patterson and Bunkley will be plenty tough for offensive lines to handle next year.

Who is the third tackle? The Eagles didn't get much, nor did they use much, of Montae Reagor last season. He returns, and looks to regain the inside production Reagor had in his time as an Indianapolis Colt. At his best, Reagor can play quick inside and add some punch to the pass rush, something the Eagles sorely lacked last year. There is Jeremy Clark, a practice-squad player a year ago who has the skills but who has not shown he can play at a high level consistently. It was a brief look at Clark last year, a big man who is trying to put it all together.

Mostly, though, hope rides on Laws to come in and provide excellent depth and challenge far beyond that. The Eagles didn't draft Laws to be a career backup. They drafted him to be an outstanding defensive tackle in the NFL.

He is the first first Eagles pick to fly so low under the radar since, well, since 1992 when the Eagles took Alabama running back Siran Stacy in the second round. They had traded their first-round pick the year before in the disastrous Antone Davis deal, and Stacy and Notre Dame's Tony Brooks and Texas' Tommy Jeter made up the team's first three picks.

In 1989, taking it a step back, Buddy Ryan drafted obscure linebacker Jessie Small from Eastern Kentucky in round two after sending the first pick to the Colts in the trade that brought the Eagles offensive guard Ron Solt.

Bad memories, indeed.

Anyway, the attention in this draft is certainly not on Laws, and that's a good thing. Everybody wants to see wide receiver DeSean Jackson in training camp. Safety Quintin Demps is a big-play guy, easy for fans to watch in practice and in game action. Laws? He is another defensive tackle, working in the trenches.

But his importance is huge. Laws is a chameleon right now, but when the season emerges the Eagles expect him to be on the field and helping the defense. It may not make headlines, but his contribution -- even if he plays 20 snaps a game -- is critical to Jim Johnson and what the defense is trying to do.