Versatility and intelligence have served the Eagles backup lineman well in his job search

PHILADELPHIA – Brett Toth has unique qualifications to serve both his country and the Eagles.

He graduated from West Point in 2018 and, after a year of military service, received a waiver to pursue an NFL career. Six years later, that pursuit continues, and he could finally land a valuable do-it-all position on the offensive line after being released six times by three teams since entering the league in 2019 as an undrafted free agent from the Eagles.

In the meantime, he has played 29 games, including two starts, including 17 games, one of which was a starter in Philly.

Not many are suited to play anywhere on an offensive line and play those positions well. Toth is suited to that and with his abilities as a backup center, backup guard and backup tackle, he should be one of the sure candidates for the 53-man roster.

“It's very difficult,” he said of the challenge of playing all five. “My favorite piece is the one Stout asked me to play.”

Stout, of course, is offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland.

“He has a good saying, a Brue Lee cliche, but 10,000 kicks,” Toth said of Stout. “He always talks about Lane (Johnson) in the passing game, he's done 10,000 kicks. When you play all five, you only get a fifth of the reps at each position, so it's difficult. You have to train it so that certain blocks at tackle kind of correspond to certain blocks at center. You just try to get reps at other positions and put them together.”

If anyone can figure this out, it's someone with a degree in nuclear engineering.

Along the way, Toth had to overcome a torn ACL two years ago, which led to a long stay on the PUP list in Carolina last year.

“When you don't play for two years, you're not used to the pain,” he said. “You don't put the same amount of strain on your body, so every time you come back there's definitely going to be a period of shock. I definitely felt that in camp last year.”

“You go out there feeling 70 percent fit and fighting as hard as you can. You also beat yourself up mentally. Last year was definitely difficult for me. I think this year the key is the mindset, that you realise you can't play politics and focus on making the squad.”

Adapting to the center position has also been an ongoing process, especially consistently snapping the ball two years ago when Stoutland tired him out there. Now it's no problem. As it turns out, the problem was easy to fix – he stopped trying to snap the ball like Jason Kelce.

“You can't try to adapt your game to one of the all-time greats,” he said. “… if somebody has seen Jason Kelce snap, there's a lot of pressure on that. I tried to change it (to Kelce's style) last year, but it didn't work out, and then I went back to my old style of play and had no problems.”

Toth, who was poached by the Arizona Cardinals after being released following his first training camp five years ago, turns 28 on Sept. 1, two days after teams are required to submit their final rosters.

“It's a double-edged sword,” he said of his birthday in relation to the final cuts. “I'm not worried about it. My attitude has always been to do whatever the team asks of me.”

So far, Toth is doing just that, and his birthday this year should be a reason to celebrate, not a reason to disappoint.

More NFL: Eagles: Nakobe Dean and James Bradberry are some of the five things we learned from the Eagles' win