Eyes Turn to Howie Roseman as Scouting Combine Nears
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The NFL Scouting Combine begins on Tuesday in Indianapolis.
On Wednesday, Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni and general manager Howie Roseman will speak to reporters from the podium, then, as is usually the case, talk to local reporters off to the side someplace shortly after they take their turns in front of the cavalcade of media from all corners of the country.
Roseman will go first at 1:15 followed by Sirianni at 1:30.
Other coaches of note who will speak on Tuesday include Kansas City’s Andy Reid (1:30), Jacksonville’s Doug Pederson (1:45), and Indianapolis’ Frank Reich (3).
In advance of the week-long testing and interviewing of more than 300 college prospects, NFL Network’s Daniel Jeremiah will conduct a conference call on Friday afternoon.
The Combine was canceled last year due to COIVD 19.
On-campus “pro days” became all the rage, with NFL personnel descending on schools across the USA, from the University of Miami all the way to the University of Washington and any school you can think of between those two distant locations.
Medical testing was more challenging, with only about 150 prospects allowed to go to Indianapolis.
None of it seemed to hinder the Eagles.
Eagles GM Howie Roseman
General manager Howie Roseman and his staff assembled a draft class that is trending toward an ‘A’, though another two years is typically when my gradebook begins getting filled in.
Now comes another important draft season.
The Eagles have 10 picks, including three in the first round.
Whatever he does with those selections, Roseman must get another ‘A,’ whether that is with players he drafts or what he receives should he trade away some of that collateral.
Can the GM be trusted to make the right moves?
Of course, he can, whether and believe it or not.
Roseman helped construct a Super Bowl team in 2017.
He hit home runs with all five of his draft picks in 2018 with four of the five players take that year – Dallas Goedert, Avonte Maddox, Josh Sweat, and Jordan Mailata - already receiving contract extensions and the fifth – Matt Pryor- starting games for the Colts.
Then there's last spring's draft as previously mentioned.
There have been mistakes, no question about that.
Every GM makes them. Heck, every person makes them.
None of the “every person” crowd, though, would have taken Jalen Reagor over Justin Jefferson in the 2020 first round.
Most would have passed on D.K. Metcalf in 2019, since so many teams did, scared off by red flags such as what proved to be an unfounded concern over steroid use, but not many in that crowd would have taken J.J. Arcega-Whiteside seven picks before Metcalf went to Seattle.
It’s the Reagor-over-Jefferson mistake, that fan-frustrating mistake, that could be Roseman’s legacy, especially in 15 years or so when Jefferson is giving his Hall of Fame induction speech in Canton and Reagor has vanished from the public eye.
It won’t matter that Rosman found Jason Kelce in the sixth round 11 years ago or that Jalen Mills, a starting CB on the Super Bowl championship team came in the seventh round of 2016, or Super Bowl contributor Beau Allen arrived in that same round two years earlier.
It probably won’t matter if Roseman stacks another strong draft class on top of the one he had last year and in 2018.
It seems he will never be forgiven for the Reagor pick.
Owner Jeffrey Lurie has absolved Roseman of all his sins, but this is Roseman’s final year of a four-year extension he and Pederson signed after they won the Super Bowl.
Roseman has made mistakes. Every GM has.
Some lose their jobs, others stay on to try to reprove themselves.
Lurie has stayed the course and will likely do so again by giving Roseman a new contract at some point. Probably soon, too.
If a new deal isn’t done before the draft, however, the lack of one will become a bigger story as summer creeps in.
Ed Kracz is the publisher of SI.com’s Fan Nation EaglesToday and co-host of the Eagles Unfiltered Podcast. Check out the latest Eagles news at www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles or www.eaglestoday.com and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.
