Three Highlights From Jeffrey Lurie's News Conference at Owner Meetings
There was more to Jeffrey Lurie’s rare meet-the-media session in South Florida on Tuesday at the NFL Annual Meetings than just uniforms.
Here are three highlights:
JALEN HURTS
Lurie has no idea if Hurts is the answer at quarterback, saying, “who knows what the future holds?”
In a broader answer, he referenced Buffalo’s Josh Allen when talking about Hurts.
“It’s very, very difficult to project what you call franchise or what we might call a franchise quarterback,” said the owner. “It happens. It just happens. After year one or year two is Josh Allen a franchise quarterback? Was he even thought to be a franchise quarterback when Buffalo drafted him? I think the answers are clearly no, no, and no. He developed into one.
“Now we have a young, 23-year-old quarterback who gets better every year in college, and in the pros, he’s really had one full year. No one knows where that’s going to end up, but I think what you do know is that you have a guy who is incredibly dedicated, excellent leader of men, players around him gravitate to him, he will do anything and everything to get better and work on every weakness he has and try to maximize every strength he has.
“That’s why were’ committed to Jalen at age 23.”
Jalen Hurts
Philadelphia Eagles
ROSEMAN’S CONTRACT
Lurie called it an easy decision to give his longtime general manager another contract extension that will run through 2025.
“Howie deserves a lot of credit,” he said. “Obviously over the last five years, we’ve been in the playoffs four of the five years and won a Super Bowl. He’s really good at building a roster and rebuilding a roster and he’s very, very well-regarded in the league. It’s always a hard decision to take every single instance and evaluate it and it was a pretty easy decision to make when it came to really looking at the facts.
“People like to concentrate on hitting on a draft pick, well you know the reality in the NFL is about 60 percent of first-round picks become solid starters and that’s if you’re drafting in the first half of the first round, the odds go up. If you’re drafting in the bottom half the odds probably go down quite a bit."
Lurie rattled off a lot of areas that he looks at when arriving at his decision.
“It’s a very, very intense and detailed process and I go through it as if I barely know the man and basically go through it as if, if I’m coming from another planet and I’m going to look at it, what are the positive and what are the negatives and the strengths outweigh the weaknesses,” he said.
ARCEGA-WHITESIDE DECISION
Lurie shed some light on the decision to select J.J. Arcega-Whiteside in the second round of the 2019 draft, a decision that has not worked out.
His answer came when asked if he is too involved with decision-making and Lurie said he has been slightly less involved as the years have gone “because I really believe in who we have in the building.”
He pointed to three instances where he said, “I kind of made our opinions known about what our strategy should be, but it was based on others’ enthusiasm.’ I’m only human and that’s the way it goes.”
Those instances were drafting Lane Johnson fourth overall in 2013, trying to wait until the third round to draft Russell Wilson in the 2012 draft, and the selection of Jordan Mailata in 2018.
J.J. Arcega-Whiteside
Ed Kracz/SI.com Eagle Maven
Then the owner told a story about the night they picked WR J.J. Arcega-Whiteside in the second of the 2019 draft.
He said that there was a tie in the war room on draft night as to whether to take him or Parris Campbell.
“They said to me flippantly, ‘Who do you want?’’ Lurie recalled. “These are both red-star players, A+ character, and I said, ‘you have my blessing, whatever way you want to go.’ I think they probably went based on injury risk. Parris had some soft-tissue injury risk.
“Like everybody in the NFL, up until that point, kudos to Washington, they got the player who’s had a great career in Terry McLaurin (who went early in the third round). I probably backed off, not that I was super involved ever, but I think I get excited. I’m a football fan. I love the possibilities of players and it’s always to support those that are excited about players in the draft.”
There was no mention of DK Metcalf, who had red flags attached to him that kept many teams away from taking him until Seattle took him seven picks after JJAW went.
MORE: Jeffrey Lurie Announces Eagles Will Return to Kelly Green Scheme in 2023
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.
