It’s Jeffrey Lurie’s team, and he can do with it what he wants.
So if he wants to meddle, or not meddle, that’s his right. It’s the same if he wants to groom his son, Julian, to take over for him in the coming years, or if he wants to give general manager Howie Roseman a three-year contract extension, which he did last week.
So, whether you like it or not, there’s no doubt that Roseman will be running the Eagles’ draft next month.
Quite possibly, you don’t. But Lurie does.
WHAT WILL THEY DO?Eagles have 3 first-round picks. Are they better off trading up, down, or standing pat?
Then Lurie explained why last week at the NFL owners’ meetings. He said the rate of hitting on a first-round pick is about 60% – higher for the first half of the round, lower for the second half. The success rate drops significantly in the ensuing rounds.
“In all the ways of evaluating a general manager, it is truly a broad position,” Lurie told reporters at the meetings. “You’re managing a lot of information, a lot of departments, and it’s a very important leadership position in an organization.
“(Roseman) is really good at building a roster and rebuilding a roster, and he’s very well regarded in the league.”
The roster-building goes beyond the draft and includes trades and free-agent signings. Here, Roseman has certainly helped the Eagles.
They have the three first-round picks (Nos. 15, 16 and 19) because Roseman traded back six spots in the first round last year to get one, and he traded Carson Wentz, coming off an awful 2020 season, for another.
But there is certainly a lot to be worried about with what Roseman actually does with those first-round picks.
The Eagles haven’t done much in free agency, as even Roseman explained at the owners’ meetings.
“Having three guys in the top 20 changes kind of the necessity of free agency, and forcing a veteran player,” he said.
So it seems like the Eagles are depending on their draft picks, at least the early-round picks, to contribute right away.
There’s nothing wrong with that plan, as long as you draft the right players. But it’s not always that simple. And here, Lurie has always wanted a collaborative approach with Roseman consulting with his personnel staff, scouts, coaches, and yes, Lurie.
The owner said last week that he meddles less than he used to. But he gave some past examples of when he was hoping for a certain outcome. That, at least, shows that he was heavily involved.
In 2013, Lurie describes how he rooted for the Eagles to take right tackle Lane Johnson in the first round, which they did. And he was also rooting for them to take left tackle Jordan Mailata, who had never played football before, in the seventh round in 2018.
Lurie also said he shared in Roseman’s and former coach Andy Reid’s enthusiasm about quarterback Russell Wilson in 2012. But the Seahawks traded up to get Wilson in the third round. The Eagles took Nick Foles later in that round.
“(Wilson) is a player we didn’t get, and I’ll always regret it,” Lurie said. “It was someone I really wish we had drafted in the second round, and didn’t wait. But we really didn’t think that anyone would jump us and take Russell, so that was that.”
Those were the good examples, of course.
The only bad decision Lurie mentioned was drafting wide receiver J.J. Arcega-Whiteside in the second round in 2019.
While many Eagles fans have compared Arcega-Whiteside to D.K. Metcalf, who was chosen seven picks later, Lurie said the decision was actually between Arcega-Whiteside and another disappointing player, Parris Campbell.
“That was a tie between JJ and Parris in that (draft) room, and they said to me flippantly, ‘Who do you want?’” Lurie said. “These are both red-star players, A-plus character, and I said, ‘You have my blessing, whatever way you want to go.’
“I think they probably went based on injury risk. Parris had some soft-tissue injury risk.”
Arcega-Whiteside has 16 career receptions, Campbell has 34 and Metcalf has 216.
Lurie didn’t mention Metcalf at all.
“Like everybody in the NFL, up until that point, kudos to Washington, they got the player who’s had a great career in Terry McLaurin,” he said about their third-round pick that year.
“I probably backed off, not that I was super involved ever, but I think I get excited. I’m a football fan. I love the possibilities of players, and it’s always to support those that are excited about players in the draft.”
And this brings us to the present day, by way of the quarterbacks, going from Wentz to Jalen Hurts to the future.
When Lurie was asked about trading Wentz after his dreadful 2020 season in which he was benched for the final 4½ games in favor of Hurts, Lurie instead went back to 2017, when Wentz was at his best.
“Carson Wentz, let me just say, Carson 2017, we’ll never forget it,” Lurie said. “There’s no way we’d be the number one seed going into the playoffs if not for Carson. I doubt we would have been able to win the Super Bowl if we didn’t have the number one seed. It’s hard to know, but that was the best of Carson.
“When we drafted Carson, that’s what we hoped for … It didn’t end how we envisioned it to end, but I’m always thankful.”
It would be a mistake to say that Lurie and Roseman were foreshadowing Wentz’s demise when the Eagles drafted Hurts in the second round in 2020. After all, the Eagles had given Wentz a four-year extension worth as much as $128 million in June, 2019.
Is Hurts the answer? We’ll find out this season. But Lurie made it clear that the term “franchise quarterback” isn’t a finite answer.
“It’s very, very difficult to project what you call franchise or what we might call franchise quarterback,” he said. “It happens. It just happens. After year one or year two, is (Buffalo’s) Josh Allen a franchise quarterback? Was he even thought to be a franchise quarterback when Buffalo drafted him? I think the answers are clearly no, no and no. He developed into one.
“We all have this vision, myself included, of an automatic franchise quarterback. It’s almost nonexistent and when it does exist, you’re very, very luck to have that.”
If it’s not Hurts, then Lurie trusts Roseman to give the Eagles the resources, either in trade or draft capital, to find the next franchise quarterback.
Contact Martin Frank at mfrank@delawareonline.com. Follow on Twitter @Mfranknfl.
