Eagles' Exec Highlights Proactive Approach

Eagles GM Howie Roseman has made a habit of setting the market for top-tier players.

Dec 31, 2023; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown (11) / Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

PHILADELPHIA - One of the Eagles’ core business philosophies is to identify foundational players and extend them as early as possible.

The strategy is not without risk but if the evaluation is correct, it’s always cost effective in the long run.

This offseason Eagles GM Howie Roseman struck early with a host of players, starting with two-time Pro Bowl left guard Landon Dickerson, and second-team All-Pro kicker Jake Elliott. From there Roseman went back to the well for a second time with star left tackle Jordan Mailata and then locked up both of his star receivers – DeVonta Smith and A.J. Brown – to huge deals.

In between it all Roseman also found the time to buy out the restricted free agency year of one-time undrafted free agent turned starting safety Reed Blankenship, the same path the GM once took with another UDFA hit, now-Chicago linebacker T.J. Edwards.

All the extensions are top of the market from an average-annual-value standpoint for the moment but tacked onto current deals, meaning the bigger-money seasons won’t kick in until the deals have been surpassed by the other stars around the league up for extensions. 

To help with the salary-cap hits, Roseman also employs void years on the back end of contracts as a standard business practice.

Perhaps the real hero here is Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie, who is agreeable to serving up large sums of money upfront and perfectly willing to write off spent money down the road from a bookkeeping perspective for a little extra cap space to win now.

There is another reward to this policy for the Eagles, however.

“You can’t have a good culture if you’re not rewarding the people who have been here, the people that have kind of gone through it,” Roseman said on the Adam Schein Show on SiriusXM Mad Dog Sports Radio last week.

“It’s great to sign free agents, but we have to get back and make sure we’re continuing to draft, developing, and paying our own on and off the field. That’s really important.”

Receiver is the perfect example of the sentiment because there are several superstars like Minnesota’s Justin Jefferson, Cincinnati’s Ja’Marr Chase, and Dallas’ CeeDee Lamb, who are in line for monster deals in which their respective teams will either be paying a tax for dragging their feet or looking to trade disgruntled talents who feel disrespected by the inability to pay what the market dictates.

Brown is currently the “highest-paid receiver” in the NFL in the wake of his three-year, $96 million extension. The $33M AAV, however, doesn't begin until 2027 and will be lapped by the aforementioned three wideouts and a handful of others by then.

Had Brown wanted to play hardball he could have waited and gotten more money.

“All that can come into factor. But like I said earlier, both parties just came together,” Brown told Eagles Today. “It was the right time, and it was mutual. I’m happy that it did.” 

Roseman is proactive by design.

“We feel like we don’t want to necessarily wait for anyone to go first to do it,” said Roseman. “We want our players to feel like they’re important. And this is just our perspective, it doesn’t mean it’s right, but we want to make sure we’re getting out in front.”

Roseman went back to April of 2024 and the $255M extension for quarterback Jalen Hurts, who briefly held the title of highest-paid player in NFL history because the Eagles moved first.

“There were a lot of quarterbacks who were ready to sign, and we felt like there was a moment there for us and the players, just like for us and the players at receivers that we have on this team, great players, great people, all those guys,” said Roseman.

Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson quickly usurped Hurts’ contract which looks more and more team-friendly as the days pass.

“Here’s a moment we don’t necessarily know what’s going to happen on either side, not for the team, not for the player, but we can figure out something fair that works for all of us and that it’s not contingent on what anyone else is doing, it’s contingent on how we feel about each other,” Roseman explained.

“I think that’s kind of the philosophy there in trying to do any of our deals early, just rewarding them, them understanding that we’re doing it in a moment that shows them how much we really want them here and from their perspective. Being out there first has gotta be a good feeling for them as well.”

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