Howie Roseman on Building the Roster, the Patience of Jeffrey Lurie, and More
Howie Roseman wasn’t ready to talk about free agents or off-season strategy.
The Eagles GM is practicing what coaches and players have said all year – be where your feet are, don’t look ahead to the possibility of a contract extension, or, in the case of coordinators Jonathan Gannon and Shane Steichen, a head coaching job.
So, Roseman’s head isn’t ready to wrap around the more than a dozen players who will become free agents when Sunday ends.
His feet are deeply immersed in Super Bowl LVII this week, with the Eagles he built against the coach who helped him learn how to build rosters in the Chiefs’ Andy Reid.
“We’re trying to not get our ass kicked from a great team with a bunch of great players and obviously a Hall of Fame coach, who’s just phenomenal,” said the architect of a second roster that has made a Super Bowl just five years after winning a championship with a different head coach, a different quarterback and just seven active players who remain from that roster.
Roseman’s work is essentially done at this point, but what a job he did.
Already he has been named Executive of the Year by the Pro Football Writers, the second time he has received the honor
He sat down to talk to a small group of reporters on Saturday.
After the Eagles were destroyed by Tampa Bay last year, in head coach Nick Sirianni’s first playoff game ad quarterback Jalen Hurts’ first playoff start, the GM knew his team needed to get better.
“We had to do whatever it took to do that and we were looking for ways to address the positions we thought were important to be a better team,” he said. “Definitely felt like coming out of last season, from a personal standpoint, we weren’t good enough to compete with the best teams in the league.
“That was our goal was to identify the positions we had to get better at and address them in any way we could. Obviously, through free agency, the draft, and trades.”
TWO BIG MOVES
At the NFL Scouting Combine in late February, Roseman made it clear that the pass rush needed to be upgraded, and voila, he went after Haason Reddick.
He recognized that Jalen Reagor wasn’t good enough, and he traded for A.J. Brown.
The signings kept coming, many of them well after the NFL winter meetings were held in late March.
At those meetings, under the warm sun of Florida, Roseman took some heat from fans and some media about why the offseason was flowing like molasses.
“The offseason doesn’t end from our perspective until the trade deadline,” he said. “After the trade deadline, you don’t really have the opportunity to help your team. Sometimes it just doesn’t roll where it’s the first day of the league year and all of a sudden, you’re addressing everything and you feel really good.
“I think for us, that’s the one thing that, when I think about (20)17, that was a great lesson for us as a staff – if you can’t do it right in the moment, you’re going to have opportunities throughout.”
NEVER COMFORTABLE
Roseman is smarter than to think he has arrived as a GM.
He has been kicked around enough times by fans and his boss, Jeffrey Lurie, to understand that kind of thinking could eventually lead to another trip to a windowless, closet-sized office in some rarely-visited corner of the NovaCare Complex.
Perhaps the windowless and closet-sized is exaggerated, but Roseman was downgraded after owner Lurie gave Chip Kelly the power of GM to go along with his coaching duties in 2015. Kelly failed spectacularly while Roseman didn’t pout.
Instead, during his exile, he learned how to get better at the job he wanted to do again
“I think experience is a great tool, I really do,” he said. “And I think adversity’s a great tool. You could say that now, not necessarily when you’re in that moment. I think if you can find a way to use those moments productively, you can continue to get better, and I feel like I can continue to get better personally.
“I don’t feel like I’ve hit a level where I’m not learning new things or open to new ideas. I’m not saying that to pat myself on the back. It’s just the reality of it.”
PATIENCE OF JEFFREY LURIE
Roseman has taken advantage of seasons that have gone off track and is fortunate to have the patience of owner Jeffrey Lurie on his side, something that is not lost on him at all.
In 2012, Reid’s final season in Philly, when the Eagles won four games, the draft led to Lane Johnson fourth overall then Zach Ertz in the second round.
In 2015, when the Eagles won six games, Rosman moved around the 2016 draft board to come away with Carson Wentz as the second overall pick. While the move didn’t work in the long run, Wentz was the reason the Eagles had home-field advantage in the run to the Super Bowl LII title.
In 2020, when the Eagles won four games, he traded up to draft DeVonta Smith and then fortified the offensive line by selecting Landon Dickerson.
“We’re very fortunate here to work for someone in Jeffrey, who believes in us and doesn’t kind of ebb and flow when we have terrible years, which we’ve had a couple here, obviously,” said Roseman. “When I think back, sometimes those terrible years do lead you to opportunities like we have now.
“I definitely don’t want to go through them again, but I think you have to reflect in those moments and make sure you get back to doing the things that are really right, because we have a huge responsibility to this organization, to our players, to our coaches, to our front office, to the whole building, and to our fans. Nobody takes the losses, nobody takes the mistakes harder than I do.”
Clearly, Roseman has learned from those mistakes and affected a turnaround so quickly, it could make your head spin if you let it.
“I think because it’s so hard to get there, we’re never thinking, ‘Hey it’s going to take two, three years,’” he said.
“We’re trying to get as good as possible as quickly as possible. I don’t know if I would ever be in the mindset of, hey, let’s take two or three years. And sometimes you have to get a little lucky with some of the things that happen.”
Ed Kracz is the publisher of SI.com’s Fan Nation Eagles Today and co-host of the Eagles Unfiltered Podcast. Check out the latest Eagles news at www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles or www.eaglesmaven.com and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.
