How Former Jaguars GM Helped Build Eagles' Super Bowl Roster

Once upon a time, Dave Caldwell and the Jaguars were painfully close to playing the Eagles in the Super Bowl. Eight years later, Caldwell has found a home in the Eagles front office.

Since the Jaguars parted ways with Caldwell late in the 2020 season, he’s been a key cog in Philadelphia’s front office, building what most consider the NFL’s best roster. Now the Eagles’ senior personnel director/advisor to the general manager, Caldwell joined Howie Roseman in May of 2021.

Over the three drafts since, the Eagles selected Jordan Davis, Cam Jurgens and Nakobe Dean in 2022, Jalen Carter and Nolan Smith in 2023, and Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean in 2024. They also added Saquon Barkley and Zack Baun last season in free agency.

In his first public comments since the Jaguars fired him, the Buffalo native spoke to Ryan O’Halloran of the Buffalo News at last week’s combine. After his seven years with Shad Khan and the Jaguars, Caldwell said he was selective in choosing his next stop because winning in the NFL is extremely difficult.

“It’s so hard,” Caldwell told O’Halloran, “and the team Howie and his staff have put together is the best team I’ve ever been a part of.”

The prior team he was a part of, Jacksonville, peaked in the 2017 AFC Championship Game. It was the culmination of a five-year rebuild, a forecast Caldwell predicted when he took the Jaguars job in 2013.

“When I interviewed there,” Caldwell said, “I felt like I had a good projection of what it would take and how long it would take – five years. I told Shad that. I thought in five years we would build a team capable of competing for a Super Bowl. Sure enough …”

Sure enough, it fell short in controversial fashion as New England escaped with a 24-20 victory. And three years later, it fell short for Caldwell. In hindsight, Caldwell told O’Halloran he would’ve handled the team’s approach to the pandemic differently.

“I did a bad job of adapting our process to Covid,” Caldwell said. “Bad process, bad results. I would have changed my process to get to know the players we drafted, and that’s nobody’s fault but mine. I take full responsibility for that. As we got into the season, I had some serious concerns, but you live and learn.

“I look back and give a lot of credit to Shad: He gave me a long runway, probably more than I deserved,” said Caldwell, who still lives in Jacksonville.

And because he still lives in Jacksonville, he primarily scouts college games in the Southeastern Conference. Providing invaluable information on prospects like Davis, Carter, Smith and Dean, Caldwell didn’t receive interview requests for GM vacancies with the Raiders, Jets and Titans. And despite the NFL’s lack of second-time general managers, Denver GM George Paton told O’Halloran that Caldwell could become an exception for owners – especially after engineering that 2017 Jaguars team.

“I think head coaches are more of a known commodity and they can evaluate them a little easier than they can a general manager, who could run a really good process and drafts well but doesn’t win,” Paton said. “Dave is sharp. I respected how he handled himself in Jacksonville and how he drafted good players and built a really good team.”

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