Inside The Eagles Draft: 'There's Never 32 First-Round Grades On Our Board'

GM Howie Roseman admitted that 32 first-round picks doesn't mean 32 first-round grades.

A banner advertising the 2025 NFL Draft on display in the parking lot of Lambeau Field on April 11, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. | Sarah Kloepping/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

PHILADELPHIA - Winning the Super Bowl comes with its privileges, but there is one area where they do not extend: the annual NFL Draft.

By virtue of their 2024-25 success, the Eagles will start the draft process with the No. 32 overall pick. If GM Howie Roseman stays put, his team will get what's labeled as a first-round selection but not a player that's evaluated as one by the organization.

Roseman made that stark admission abundantly clear on Tuesday at his pre-draft media availability inside the NovaCare Complex's auditorium.

"There's never 32 first-round grades on our board," the veteran personnel executive said. "We don't have 32 first-round grades in this draft."

Several NFL personnel people tabbed only two players to Philadelphia Eagles On SI as real Blue-Chip players in the draft -- Penn State's Abul Carter and Colorado's Travis Hunter -- and most have measured the true first-round graded from eight to 10, all the way up to 15 for the most liberal.

Roseman takes a backward approach in an attempt to generate the best outcome for his team.

"The way we go into looking in the draft is we always take the worst case scenario and work back from that, and we've got to be really comfortable with whatever is our worst case scenario, which will always entail getting a good player," said Roseman. "... So obviously it depends on how things go. You go through a lot of hypotheticals, you try to put yourself in any possible position so that you're ready to execute."

Roseman rewound to 2024 when he stayed patient at No. 22 overall and ultimately snagged cornerback Quinyon Mitchell, who finished second in the NFL's Defensive Rookie of the Year voting behind only Jared Verse of the Los Angeles Rams.

"Just even looking at last year, the guys that we thought were most realistic being available at 22, we feel like we got fortunate to get one of the guys that we didn't have in a lot of the scenarios, so luck plays a part in it," Roseman admitted.

However, last year's class was considered much deeper at the top than this year's, and the Eagles were 10 spots higher, meaning only a handful of teams had to reach for a true first-round graded prospect like Mitchell to fall.

This year, there are fewer first-round grades overall, and 10 extra draft positions Philadelphia has to wait on

"Obviously, everyone's looking at things differently. Everyone has a different vision for what they're looking for their team," said Roseman. Everyone has a different vision for the particular players that they're looking at and you just hope that that makes sense for your football team."

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