FOXBOROUGH – The fun part of summer starts on Wednesday.

Before the first of two scheduled joint practices against the Philadelphia Eagles on Wednesday, the Patriots held a one-hour walkthrough on Tuesday morning.

After it, players met with the media to discuss what lies ahead and the importance of this week.

Philadelphia comes in with a loaded roster and Super Bowl expectations. New England has also loaded up a bit – a little similar to the 2006 offseason heading into 2007 – and is trying to show that all of the schedule talk last year wasn’t true, that they truly are a top contender.

It’s only practice, but I asked both Robert Spillane and Hunter Henry if they consider this a litmus test of sorts for this point in training camp.

“You can look at joint practices one of two ways,” said Henry. “I think some people can overreact to them and you can under react to them. I mean, at the end of the day, it is practice. We’ve got to come out and compete, though. This is another team coming in here. They’ll be ready to go. we’ve got to match that intensity. So, yeah, it’s a good football team, a really, really good football team. They’ve obviously proven it in this league the last few years with a lot of good football players. So, it’ll be a big challenge for us and I think all the guys are pretty excited about it.”

“Every day, every rep, every time you get to step on the field…is tomorrow bigger than today? No, every opportunity you get to step on this field is huge,” added Spillane. “We’re just going to take them one rep at a time.”

On Monday, Mike Vrabel said the starters will have about 28-30 reps against the Philly starters.

Make no mistake about it…it’s only practice in August, but every single one of those reps will be treated as a litmus test for two teams hoping to hold the Lombardi on Valentine’s Day night.