Translating Howie Roseman's Draft Trade Breadcrumbs

The Eagles general manager didn't reveal many clues about his intentions when the 2020 NFL Draft kicks off next week, so here's some reading between the lines

Howie Roseman isn’t going to come right out and reveal which players he desires in the NFL draft or even what his strategy will be when the first round arrives on Thursday.

The best you can do is follow what little breadcrumbs the Eagles general manager dispenses.

Roseman and the Eagles’ VP of player personnel Andy Weidl were on a conference with reporters for about 40 minutes to discuss the draft.

So, will Roseman trade up?

There are reports that Cleveland wants to trade down from pick No. 10, and, well, the Eagles have done business with the Browns in the recent past and have Cleveland to thank for Carson Wentz. Also, Andrew Berry is Cleveland’s GM after spending last year in Philly as the VP of football operations.

NFL Network’s Daniel Jeremiah said on a Thursday conference call that the New York Jets could be interested in trading back from 11, saying that new GM Joe Douglas, who was formerly Roseman’s right-hand man, would like some mid-round picks to help rebuild New York’s roster.

Finally, there was a report that Oklahoma receiver CeeDee Lamb is Roseman’s target and wll try to move up to get him.

It would be a steep climb, and Roseman has eight picks in this year’s draft to use as ammunition. He has said many times this offseason that he wants to have as many picks as possible to get increase the hit rate of getting a player who pans out, especially after having just five picks in each of the last two drafts.

But here is a breadcrumb from Roseman about that:

“I think when we are moving up in any round – first round, second round, third round, fourth round – I think we just look at the value of the player, where the board drops off. If we see a big gap and there's a big drop off, then we'll look at that. If we feel like there's a group of guys that we really like that we can choose from, then we'll probably stay put or move back.”

So what’s the translation here?

With so many receivers available in this draft, the Eagles don’t need to go get one, or is Lamb so highly regarded by Roseman and Weidl that it might be time to fasten your seatbelts for a launch upward?

Another breadcrumb from Roseman:

“I remember in 2010 when we traded up for Brandon Graham and then we moved back in the second round and got some of those picks back. There's ways to do that, there’s different ways to go through this draft process, and we'll be ready for all those opportunities.”

He’s saying there’s a chance. Right?

Then there’s this Roseman breadcrumb:

“There's certainly a drop off in every draft. It's very unusual to sit there and say you have 32 first-round grades on guys. It's just not realistic.”

This could mean Roseman doesn’t have as many receivers with first-round grades as we may think, and, yeah, he wants Lamb. Or if he can’t get him, he’s moving back, maybe out of the first round all together.

Trading too far back wouldn’t seem prudent, though.

The Eagles missed the boat on the stacked running back crop in 2017, taking Donnel Pumphrey in the fourth round.

They may have missed out on the deep pool of defensive linemen in last year’s draft, taking end Shareef Miller in the fourth round and Miller never saw the field.

Roseman wants to get on board this year, right?

“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me,” sad Roseman when asked

To talk about how he views the receiver crop.

“We've been in this situation a couple times with strong classes and I think it's come back to bite me to talk about it. I would just say what we are doing is we are trying to stack the board based on the quality of the player.

“Obviously, there’s some positions that have more depth than others. I know a lot of other people have had the opportunity to talk about that specific position in that class, but we don't want to get ahead of ourselves and say just because there's a perceived position of strength that that's where we're going to choose from.”

Translation: Who knows?

Roseman likes to make deals in the first round. He has done so in each of the last two years and three times since being put back in charge in 2016.

Translation: He’s making a deal. There’s just no way of telling whether that’s up or back.