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Dungy says Reagor good for Birds | Inquirer | 03/28/2007

excerpt:

PHOENIX - Tony Dungy was at the RCA Dome on Oct. 22 hours before the Indianapolis Colts' game against Washington. The head coach looked around and thought it was odd that Montae Reagor was not already in the building.

Then Dungy heard. En route to the game, Reagor had been in a horrible accident when a car sideswiped his sport-utility vehicle, causing it to roll three times.

"We had had so many things that had happened" last season, Dungy said yesterday. "It was just kind of, 'Ah, here is another kind of unbelievable thing.' I knew right where he was getting on the highway to come down, and I just couldn't believe how it could happen."

The starting defensive tackle for the Colts suffered fractures to his nose and the orbital bone near his left eye. His season was over, but Reagor was lucky to be alive.

Last week, the Eagles signed the 29-year-old to a three-year contract worth nearly $6.5 million. Dungy said that Reagor likely needed to get his weight down, but that the Eagles had gotten a good player.

"He's got the drive to come back, and the doctors have cleared him to go ahead and go to work," Dungy said. "I'm hoping we'll see something special, because he's a unique guy.

"We were all so sad at how that all turned out, but he hung with us down the stretch and really helped us. You just don't know. I don't know . . . what kind of history we have with people coming back from something like that."

In 2004 and '05, Reagor had 101/2 sacks and pressured the quarterback 51 times. At a news conference last week, he said he had full vision in his left eye even though it was swollen because of cosmetic surgery.

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