Ralph Vacchiano
NFL reporter
Howie Roseman knows as well as anyone sometimes does not work as planned. Two years ago, the Philadelphia Eagles team he built was perhaps a terrible penalty of winning a Super Bowl. Last year they continued with a 10-1 start.
And then, so, everything was gone. Everything he built seemed to be erased in a 1-6 collapse and a loss of comfort in the first round of the playoffs.
All in Philadelphia were angry, including the head of Roseman.
But all that the general manager of the Eagles could do was return to work.
“When you work in Philadelphia, you know you are one step away from the banners (angry) flying about stadiums,” Roseman said this week at the Super Bowl in New Orleans. “Then you have to keep your head down. Everything that matters is to win. I can explain my bad movements and the reasoning behind them and the logic that I think had. Nobody cares.
“You are judged for your registration and you are judged for the success of ESO.”
According to this measure, no general manager in Sports had a better low season than Roseman last year. He doubled in the list he had built and added aggressively to her, addressing each hole, every defect he could find. And the results were spectacular. After a slow start of 2-2, their eagles made a tear after their rest week, winning 10 consecutive games on their way to a record of 14-3.
And since then they have sailed through the playoffs to win the NFC championship and establish a rematch with the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl Lix.
So how did the general assistant/manager? With a combination of bold expenses, intelligent writing and an incomparable eye for talent. He also made several movements that were not exactly in his comfort zone as well.
Here is a look at five of the largest movements that Roseman made last spring that helped the Eagles shake their disaster 1-6 and return to the top:
1. Sign Saquon Barkley
Roseman recently said that this decision “was not a trigger difficult to throw.” In fact, it had to be the easiest call of the low season. The Eagles had a 1,000 -yard corridor last season (D’Ar Swift, 1,049 yards), but despite their powerful offensive line they were not really a dangerous or constant rushed team. They could not count on that, and they did not, when they needed it most.
So, when the giants would not pay Barkley, the Eagles did it with pleasure, obtaining the prize of a deep and free corridor class for three years and $ 37.5 million with $ 26 million guaranteed. And Barkley rewarded them with an almost record season: 2,005 yards by land in 16 games, good enough to make him an MVP finalist and turn Eagles into the second best team by land in the NFL. They averaged 179.3 yards per game, more than 70 yards per game more than last year.
“I had a lot of confidence in the player and the person,” Roseman said. “I would like to say that he has exceeded expectations, but he has always been one of the best players I’ve seen every time I’ve seen it. So I really don’t surprise me any of this.”
Barkley has stabilized the offensive of the Eagles, given space to the field marshal Jalen Hurts to rediscover part of its ancient form, and has demonstrated a great ability for great plays in great moments. That has been especially true in the first three playoff games when it has already run for 442 yards and five touchdowns in three games.
2. Stabilization of the coaching staff
If you are looking for a reason why Eagles collapsed at the end of last season, you don’t look for dysfunctional staff under chief coach Nick Sirianni. The scheme of the offensive coordinator Brian Johnson and the dependence of the air game never seemed to combine with Sirianni’s philosophy. And the scheme of the defensive coordinator Sean Desai was so ineffective that he was sent mid -season for Matt Patricia, who remarkably managed to be worse.
Sirianni was probably going to make changes anyway, but multiple sources in the organization of the Eagles insisted that Roseman was the driving force behind the layoffs of Johnson, Desai and Patricia and the hiring of their replacements: the offensive coordinator Kellen Moore and The defensive coordinator Vic Fangio.
Obtaining 66 -year -old fadgio had been a search for years for Roseman. Fangio was a consultant of the Eagles in 2022 and would have been his choice to replace the late Jonathan Gannon in 2023 if Fangio had not been hired by Miami when Gannon had gone to Arizona.
Fangio, after a difficult beginning, turned the Eagles into defensive team number 1 in the NFL. Meanwhile, Moore found the correct balance between the race and the pass, leaned towards Barkley and causing the offensive to be much more consistent than during the collapse at the end of last year.
3. Sign Zack Baun
If there was a clear defect in the defense of the Eagles last season, it was the body of supporters. And to be fair, they mostly had Nakobe Dean’s return to health to trigger that improvement, which he did this year, before he hurt again.
When Roseman signed Baun of the New Orleans Saints for only one year and $ 3.5 million, the GM did not see it as an answer to the problems of the philadelphia support layer. He saw it as a situational advantage corridor to be in the rotation behind Bryce Huff, a much more expensive firm of free agents (three years, $ 51.1 million, $ 34 million guaranteed) that did not work so well. He also said he saw Baun as potentially “the best special team player we have.”
But that, Roseman said, was the “floor.” They also saw him as a player with “a similar skill set” for Andrew van Ginkel, who had six captures and eight deviations from Fangio defense in Miami last year. And indeed, given that role in Philadelphia, Baun prospered, making 151 cup with 3.5 captures, four breaks of passes, five loose balls and being named in the first All-Procation team.
4. Drafting Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper leave
There is no doubt that the draft broke perfectly for the Eagles, and Roseman had no real control over that. But he took advantage of those breaks by recognizing the greatest needs of the Eagles and leaving their comfort zone.
Then, when corners had not been taken in the first 21 teams of the Draft, Roseman understood that his high school had been a disaster in 2023 and that James Bradberry would soon have to be replaced. So he recruited Quinyon Mitchell by Tiny Toledo, a small school risk that Roseman has almost never taken in the first round.
And then Roseman ran another risk. The Eagles had not recruited a corner in the first round since 2002, and they had only taken two in the second round in that same period. But when the versatile left he was still sitting there in selection No. 40, Roseman took a corner again. And he ignored the fact that they left he lost much of the draft process with a broken leg, thinking that he could help later in the season.
The result: both are finalists of the NFL defensive award: the only time a team has produced two of the five best voters for that award for at least the last 25 years. Mitchell quickly took over when the headline in front of Darius Slay and left finally assumed the role of Nickel.
And together they quickly rebuilt a secondary school that had become a responsibility last year and made the Eagles the defense of a better classified pass in the league.
5. Sign G. Mekhi Becton
Roseman planned to start replacing the depth of its aging of the offensive line in the draft, but could not make that happen in the first rounds. So, as soon as the draft ended, he toured what was left of the free agents market and saw a very large man who stood out.
Becton, a former first round of 6-7 and 363 pounds with the jets was still available, but after being a bust in New York with constant questions about his conditioning, he did not have many options. Roseman said he saw “a A really talented guy who was still available, so it was an easy decision for us. “
The Eagles signed Becton with a one -year contract of $ 2.75 million for depth in the Tackle. But Roseman and Sirianni spoke in spring and decided to try Becton in Guard, a position he had never played. And at the beginning of the right guard, Tyler Steen, his ankle was injured in a preseason game, Becton was ready to intervene and never looked back.
The result was that an offensive line that was already staggering from the retirement of the Center for a long time Jason Kelce did not miss the rhythm. Becton, under the guidance of the coach of the offensive line Jeff Stoutland, became one of the best NFL guards and the Eagles line remained one of the best in the entire league.
Ralph Vacchiano is an NFL reporter for Fox Sports. He spent the previous six years covering the giants and jets for SNY TV in New York, and before that, 16 years covering the giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News. Follow it on Twitter in @Ralphvacchiano.
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