Some See Tweener, Eagles See Hybrid With Talented First-Round Pick

PHILADELPHIA - The Eagles' move to get Jihaad Campbell was minor on paper but far more significant from both upside and strategy standpoints.

A top-10 player on Philadelphia’s draft board, Campbell was viewed by the Eagles’ personnel department as one of the few difference-makers in the draft, a hybrid defender who projects to give defensive coordinator Vic Fangio the kind of chess piece he had in Miami with Andrew Van Ginkel.

To more conventional thinkers, the knock on Campbell focused on the belief that he is a tweener, too small at just under 6-foot-3 and 235 pounds with a 32 ½-inch arm length to be a full-time edge player and not instinctive enough to be the leader of an NFL defense as a stacked linebacker off the ball.

The Eagles, likely with significant input from Fangio, will try to embrace the tweener aspect of Campbell’s skill set and turn him into the hybrid weapon Van Ginkel is.

That said, it’s best to think about Campbell in the Philadelphia defense on the edge first and as an off-ball LB second.

There were two hints to that after the Eagles secured Campbell by moving up one spot to No. 31 overall at the expense of one of their four fifth-round picks coming into the draft at No. 164 overall.

The first was unveiled by Campbell himself when he noted his contact with the Eagles was with edge-rushing coach Jeremiah Washburn, but the more notable came when GM Howie Roseman gave Penn State “credit” for what it's been doing with hybrid players at the college level.

“It's kind of interesting, and we talked about this a lot. You see Penn State, give them a lot of credit for what they've done,” Roseman said in a nod to Dallas All-Pro Micah Parsons and the No. 3 overall pick in Day 1 of the draft on Thursday night, new New York Giants edge rusher Abdul Carter. “They've had guys off the ball move to edge rushers. Obviously, their last two guys who've been drafted really high, they started off the ball and they moved to edge rushers.”

It was reverse engineering from that with Campbell at Alabama.

“This is a guy who was recruited from IMG at Alabama as an edge rusher. Hand in the dirt edge rusher. They had some injuries at Alabama. They played him off the ball. You see his explosiveness and his speed,” said Roseman.

In a perfect world, the Eagles want both from Campbell.

“Vic does a tremendous job with getting guys who have pass rush ability to be versatile players like that,” Roseman explained. “I think what's really fun is that those guys who have that versatility who can go out on the edge and get pressure as a rusher and he's got speed, he's got power as an edge rusher, he was trained as an edge rusher. And then, he's got the versatility to play off the ball and blitz from depth and play in space, in pass coverage, as an off-ball linebacker.”

In some sense this is the defensive version of what Roseman described as a “weapon” when he signed Saquon Barkley for the offense last year.

“We always want to improve the front seven and we view him as a front seven player who's got incredible versatility and a skillset to do both those things,” the GM said. “And the appeal is that he's got this rush skillset.”

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