Jason Avant was always steady and reliable.

He’s a good guy to have around your young receivers, a steady veteran who served the Eagles well for eight seasons during the Andy Reid and Chip Kelly tenures.

Avant is returning to the Birds, this time working with the receivers at training camp as part of the NFL’s “Bill Walsh NFL Diversity Fellowship.”

More from Spadaro at the Eagles’ website:

“I’m so excited and grateful to be here, to help a group of very talented young players,” Avant said. “I was a technical receiver. I wasn’t the fastest receiver. I wasn’t the biggest guy. I was able to get open by getting off the line of scrimmage and being precise. That’s what I hope to help teach these receivers. It’s a very talented group.”

A fifth-round draft pick of the Eagles in 2006, Avant last played in the NFL with Kansas City in 2015. Since then, he’s lived in South Jersey and has been extremely successful in running two exercise and fun zones, called Launch Trampoline Park. But when COVID-19 hit, his businesses closed. After a couple of months of waiting, fruitlessly, for the word from local government to open, Avant decided to take a different approach.

“I was a coach when I played. I was the coach in the receivers room,” Avant said. “I approached the Eagles a few months ago and, at the time, they didn’t know what Training Camp was going to look like. Then Doug (Pederson, head coach) and Howie (Roseman, executive vice president/general manager), along with Aaron Moorehead (wide receivers coach) gave me the go-ahead and here I am.

This seems to make sense for everybody. Avant was always thought of very highly within the Eagles organization. Moorehead is brand new to the job, a former Indianapolis Colt who left his WR gig at Vanderbilt to join the Birds after Carson Walch was fired. Get as many mentors around this young group of receivers as you possibly can.

FYI, the Bill Walsh Diversity Fellowship has been around for some time now, and uses training camps, offseason programs, and minicamps to give would-be coaches a foot in a door, some exposure, and a chance a full-time gig somewhere down the line.