Inside The Obsession Of Eagles Howie Roseman

PHILADELPHIA – Howie Roseman returned from his son’s basketball game one day last week, disappeared into his home office and popped in tape of the Senior Bowl and the East-West Shrine game.

“My wife walked into my office, and she’s like, ‘What’s going on right now?’” said Roseman, a day before the Eagles flew to New Orleans and Super Bowl LIX. “And I’m like, ‘Hey, we gotta make sure our offseason next year is good, and it’ll be different, and it’ll look different.’

"That for me, is the most important part – to be able to look in the mirror, wake up every morning knowing that I’m giving everything I’ve got to this team, this organization, and our fans."

To say that the Eagles general manager eats, sleeps, and breathes football – specifically, Eagles football – would be an understatement. That should be fairly evident after constructing yet another Super Bowl roster. It’s his third in eight years.

"It’s all I think about all the time," he said. "I’m thinking about what we’re going do next year in August. I’m thinking about what 2026 looks like and 2027 looks like every night when I go to bed. ...That’s my role to enjoy the team on Sundays, but the rest of the week I’m thinking about the next year. It’s very opposite to what goes on during the week.

"Everyone’s focused on how we’re beating that opponent and I want to beat that opponent, too, but I’m thinking about the players in the draft, the players in free agency, how we’re allocating our resources."

Every offseason presents its share of challenges, but Roseman has risen to meet them. Look at how he has rebuilt the defense, a process he said began in 2022 with the selection of Jordan Davis in the first round and Nakobe Dean in the third. It continued with defensive linemen Jalen Carter and Nolan Smith, both in the first round of 2023, and then last spring, with cornerback Quinyon Mitchell in the first and defensive back Cooper DeJean in the second.

Eagles Jalen Carter | By Ed Kracz/Eagles on SI

He has taken risks at most every turn, especially with Carter, who was sent home from the NFL Scouting Combine to deal with a legal matter. The Eagles felt comfortable drafting him after doing plenty of homework and now he’s one of the best defensive linemen in the league.

Dean dropped to the third round for a medical reason that was floated out there. Roseman’s staff gave him a thorough checkup and took him anyway. Dean has been hurt a lot but was a revelation this season. Giving up two primo picks to NFC East rival Washington to move up for DeJean was another risk.

Everybody assumes Roseman can take more risks than other GMs because he has the ultimate job security with Jeffrey Lurie sitting in the owner’s chair.

“I would say this, I’m not concerned about my job security,” he said. “Not because I’m on scholarship. Just because at the end of the day, if you start worrying about that and not what’s best for the team, it changes your focus. What I’m always concerned about is being able to support the people who work here. I know that being in this position, it allows the people that I’ve been with for a long time to stay here, their families to stay here. So that’s the responsibility I take. I mean that.

“I’m not going to stop taking risks, and at some point, it gets me fired, I’d rather have that than any regrets. I don’t want to leave this job with regrets. I feel like I did the first time I did that. And since I’ve been back, for better or worse, I’ve done the things I thought were the right things to do.”

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