Howie Roseman Takeaways: Roster Rebuild, the Draft, and More
It was a bit of a surprise when it was learned that Howie Roseman would be talking on Monday morning, just hours after the Eagles’ season-ending loss to the Washington Football Team.
The team’s general manager wanted to face the music of a disastrous 4-11-1 season, much of it his doing with the flawed roster he constructed.
“Part of the reason that we're talking (Monday) is because we felt like we owed it to our fans to make sure we're talking and we're not hiding,” said Roseman. “We'll have other opportunities to continue talking.”
Typically, Roseman doesn’t talk until midweek following a season, but there hasn’t been a season this bad since 2012
So, the band played and Roseman danced:
- You want change, change is coming.
So, it’s not in the front office or the head coaching seat, Roseman is going to open all the windows at the NovaCare Complex in an effort to fumigate a season that stunk from the top of the roster to the bottom.
He talked about this “this little voice inside (his) head” telling him to rebuild the roster with younger players, yet he stayed fixated on the Super Bowl season three years ago and ignored that little voice.
“I think winning in '17, we wanted to do whatever it took and whatever resources it took to win, especially when we kind of saw the opportunity,” he said. “Then '18, felt like maybe it was an opportunity to run it back with the players that we had, and maybe even in '19, just continue to keep it going.
“I think that's my responsibility that I didn't really listen (to that voice inside his head) as much as possible and now we're in the situation we are in now where change is necessary and change is inevitable to this roster and the things that we need to do to get back being the kind of team that we know we can be.”
- Maybe there are one or two people still left in this world who actually believe Roseman is the right person to remake this roster, but he pointed out the organization has won 35 games in the three previous seasons.
“We have a really good staff,” he said. “We have really good people in this building and people that we spend a lot of time trying to recruit to come to Philadelphia and help us, the last two GMs (Joe Douglas and Andrew Berry) hired in the National Football League were from this organization which I think says a lot about this organization. And we have built winning teams before, and that's our job to continue to do that and that's what we'll do here.”
Roseman, though, didn’t shirk responsibility for his role in this four-win mess.
“That doesn't mean we haven't missed on some picks,” he said. “I would just say if there's a guy that's playing really well that we were looking at in the draft or decide to go in a different direction, those things hurt. Those things are punches to your gut. I think we have exceptional people in this building.”
He could have been talking about a slew of players, but receivers Justin Jefferson and D.K. Metcalf comes immediately to mind.
- Roseman said he is not worried about his job, but if he makes too many missteps in this spring’s NFL Draft, he may start to worry.
With the sixth overall pick in the draft, the GM must get it right. Not just in the first round but every pick that comes up that early in each round.
“That's something we have to hit on, the 6th pick in the draft, in a huge, huge way, and I think that we have the right people to do that,” he said. “I know that we're going to be incredibly focused on not only that pick but the other picks we'll have in this draft and hopefully we'll have a bunch of picks and we'll go from there.”
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