If at any point during Sunday’s game, when he gets nervous, has a bad play or even if the sea of white, burgundy and gold at FedEx Field just gets a little too rough, Halapoulivaati Vaitai plans on calming himself, breathing in and exhaling.
Hey, it’s worked all week.
And the Eagles hope Vaitai’s calm demeanor will serve him and the team well as the rookie prepares to make his first career start Sunday in Washington.
“I tried to rattle this guy all week, coaching him,” offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland said. “And he don’t blink. He don’t blink. I even said to some of the other guys, ‘Am I crazy?’ He’s just a straight-line guy. That’s just who he is. He’s very focused.”
Stoutland has been riding the rookie hard all week, giving him some tough love. He said during the week of practice he made sure to be demanding and get on Vaitai hard just to see how he would respond.
The response was the same all week: “Yes, sir.”
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And then Big V would correct the mistake.
“Yeah, Stout got on him extra hard [Thursday],” right guard Brandon Brooks said. “Just ‘yes, sir, I’ll correct it.’ [Friday], he got it corrected. Just making sure he doesn’t make the same mistake twice.”
Vaitai appreciates that tough love from Stoutland now, but there was a time when Big V – whom Jason Peters has dubbed “The Quiet One” – wouldn’t have been able to take all the extra attention from his coach.
In 2012, when the Haltom, Texas product first showed up at TCU, it took him a while to get used to his head coach Gary Patterson, who Vaitai said would “always get on my butt.”
“It used to get in my head,” Vaitai said. “And I’d be like ‘dang.’ I’d think about it all day. But the older guys at TCU told me, every time they yell at you, it means they care about you.”
Still, Vaitai admits that first year was tough. But TCU had a psychologist visit with the team weekly to stress the importance of mental toughness. It was that psychologist who first told Big V to take big deep breaths.
So this week, when Stoutland tried to rattle the rookie, it didn’t work.
“Oh yeah, [Stoutland has] been all over the place,” Vaitai said. “But I like it. It helps me focus. And of course you have the older guys who are like, ‘You’re good. He just wants you to do good on Sunday.’”
The original plan for Lane Johnson’s suspension, of course, didn’t involve Vaitai. In that scenario the Eagles would have moved Allen Barbre from left guard to right tackle and then replace him with either Stefen Wisniewski or Isaac Seumalo.
But through four games, Barbre has been playing extremely well and that original plan would not just disrupt two positions, but also make sure that everyone on the line would be playing next to someone new. Head coach Doug Pederson said he's "fully committed" to Vaitai at right tackle and it's not a week to week thing.
Pederson didn't reveal he was thinking about using Vaitai until last week. Thanks to the long, drawn-out suspension appeal process, Vaitai had extra time to prepare while Johnson played at a high level.
“I think with the amount of time you have on the back end of that, it gives a guy time to develop and it gives us time as coaches to evaluate and say ‘is this guy ready at this point?’” Stoutland said. “And then you pick and choose which option you’d like to go (with).”
Stoutland on Friday recalled a conversation he had with Vaitai before the season. The long-time offensive line coach told the rookie to stay ready because he could “be in there in a second.” Stoutland told Vaitai that every year backups end up playing and he’d need to be ready.
On Monday night, when Stoutland called Vaitai to tell him that the Eagles were planning on using him as their right tackle, Stoutland made the rookie recall that conversation.
“It’s his time,” Stoutland said.
Vaitai will have a tough matchup in his first game; he'll probably see a lot of Washington's top pass rusher, Ryan Kerrigan. This week, while going against the scout team, Bryan Braman tried to imitate Kerrigan and Vaitai thinks that will help.
While most of the fans at FedEx Field will be rooting against Big V on Sunday, at least two will be pulling for him. His mother Shirley and his father Takilivi are flying in from Texas for his first pro game and he’s excited to see them.
There’s a lot at stake Sunday, but Vaitai has remained unrattled.
“Once it’s game time, I’ll flip the switch and it’s going to be a whole different ballgame,” Vaitai said.
