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No one knows what the heck is going to happen in the first round of the NFL draft. The Philadelphia Eagles have already made one trade, with reports running rampant of them possibly moving up or down on Thursday. General manager Howie Roseman has traditionally been aggressive on draft night, so expect that trend to continue.
Roseman sat down with Eagles Insider Dave Spadaro on Tuesday to offer some guarded insight on his plan. The savvy front-office executive didn’t say much, but his comments about “flexibility” could prove telling. Roseman acknowledged that the best-laid plans often go awry. The best course of action is to walk in prepared for everything.
“You can go in with a great plan but if you’re not flexible to change and see opportunities, whether it’s going up or going down, whether it’s a player you didn’t anticipate being there, I think you limit yourself,” Roseman told Spadaro. “And so I think you go in with ‘Hey, I think this would be a good outcome’ but you have to be open to very different outcomes.
“Because if you go in and just say, ‘Hey, you know this is the player I’m going to take and it doesn’t matter,’ I think it limits your flexibility to be able and go and say ‘I didn’t know this guy was going to be there.’ We did all the work on this guy, too, that’s another good option for us. We have to be ready that something’s going to happen that we didn’t anticipate, and we have to be ready for it.”
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Eagles Mentioned in More Trade Rumors
NFL Media’s Ian Rapoport first mentioned the Eagles being active on the trade market and now more reports of Roseman making a move are starting to trickle in. CBS Sports’ Jason LaCanfora thinks Philadelphia is exploring a trade up while hearing that a run on wide receivers is expected in the top-10. He wrote that Garrett Wilson, Jameson Williams, and Drake London — all rumored first-round targets for the Eagles — are “hot” right now.
Who would Roseman draft if he traded up? Two NFL mock drafts — one from this intrepid reporter, another from The Athletic — have them going up and getting LSU cornerback Derek Stingley Jr. Meanwhile, NBC Sports Philadelphia has them ascending to grab Georgia defensive tackle Jordan Davis. And Pro Football Talk has the Eagles staying put at No. 15 to take Alabama receiver Jameson Williams.
More Flexibility for Next Year’s Draft
The Eagles made a trade with the New Orleans Saints to increase their flexibility for the 2023 NFL draft, too. They are projected to have seven total picks next year: 2 first-rounders, 1 second-rounder, 1 third-rounder, 1 fourth-rounder, 1 fifth-rounder, and 1 seventh-rounder. The raging theory is that Roseman plans to take a quarterback if Jalen Hurts doesn’t succeed in 2022. He didn’t rule it out.
“We feel like we have a good sense of this year’s draft, and a little preview of next year’s draft,” Roseman told Spadaro. “But we don’t know all that can come out [in 2023], and so some of that unknown is also a positive. Who’s going to come out next year? Who’s going to ascend next year’s drat? And now you have 2 first-round picks in two straight drafts and I think that’s exciting. I think that’s exciting from a front office perspective, to be able to come back into it and have the flexibility to do that.”
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