A HALF HOUR after the sweet merciful sound of the final gun, Halapoulivaati Vaitai was once again alone on an island, trapped inside a small circle of space that had been afforded to him by a crowd of reporters who had gathered at his locker to hear the first-person account of the manhandling that all of them had witnessed. He was wearing a black T-shirt with his number on the back and a personalized moniker above it: THE QUIET ONE, it said.
Quiet or not, there were no words, and everybody seemed to understand it. Rookies who last until the fifth round aren't typically asked to step right out of a college spread offense and into a 1-on-1 matchup with a grown man of a pass rusher the way the Eagles asked Vaitai to do on Sunday against the Redskins' Ryan Kerrigan.