Is Howie Roseman Taking a Year Off?
April 28, 2025
Before I begin my annual evaluation of the Eagles draft, I feel obligated to offer a disclaimer: What follows here may be the rantings of an idiot. Remember, I was the genius who predicted five wins for the 2024 Birds, who instead won 17, including Super Bowl 59.
In other words, when I whiff, I create hurricane-force winds. Last year was epic. I am relieved only by timing of my misread. At least I wasn’t on the air at WIP to face the wrath of the merciless fan base.
Of course, in my defense, I also have to point out that I was right often enough to survive 33 years talking about the Eagles on the radio every day. I hit a few home runs along the way, too.
Why go into all of this before I evaluate the 2025 draft? Because I may be the only voice of dissent in Philadelphia these days. GM Howie Roseman, who had a brilliant off-season last winter, is a hero for winning two Super Bowl in the past seven seasons.
No one is willing to look at the here and now, the current off-season, with a critical eye because . . . . well, Howie might be right again.
But I doubt it. I doubt even Howie believes he is replicating the successes of a year ago. More and more, it seems as if he’s more interested in winning in 2026 than the current year. More and more, it seems as if he expects the Eagles to take a sabbatical this season.
I don’t have to remind everybody that Roseman lost five starters and two other major contributors from the brilliant Super-Bowl defense; defensive coordinator Vic Fangio has pointed it out repeatedly in the past couple of months.
Why didn’t Roseman manipulate the salary cap to keep Josh Sweat, Milton Williams and at least a couple of the others?
Because he said, very clearly, that he didn’t want to keep the championship roster together the way he did in 2018, at the expense of the future. He is convinced the Birds took a serious dip after that first Super-Bowl parade because he was too sentimental.
Well, there’s no danger of that happening this time. Based on my email, most fans are in denial about the current state of the roster – which is still very good, of course, but not close in depth or talent to the 2024 version.
The draft didn’t nothing to change this perception. Roseman maneuvered himself into a position to draft a top talent in LB Jihaad Campbell of Alabama in the first round. Switching spots with KC gave the Eagles a top-10 talent from a football factory. Bravo, Howie.
The drafting of Campbell also did something more significant in the big picture. It was a mea culpa for all of the seasons when the Eagles hierarchy undervalued the linebacker position. The Birds hadn’t used a first-round choice on a linebacker in 46 years.
Hello there, Jerry Robinson.
Unfortunately, the rest of the draft was a snooze, at least by Roseman’s standards. He did use his first five picks on defensive players – a tacit admission that he suffered major free-agent losses there – but there were mixed reviews on most of his picks.
For example, the projected replacement for top safety (and major pain in the ass) Chauncey Gardner-Johnson was second-rounder Andrew Mukuba of Texas, a ballhawk with dubious size and some tackling issues. He went ahead of most projections at pick 64.
My biggest concern is that Howie kept trading down – three times in rounds three and four, and four times overall – to amass a grand total of 12 picks in the 2026 draft.
If that isn’t a sign of Roseman’s primary focus, what is?
Pardon my audacity, but our beloved GM is wrong this time. He is overcompensating for what happened after the 2018 championship season. He is sacrificing the present for the future.
Fans who are fantasizing about a repeat of Super Bowl glory this season are ignoring the reality of a difficult situation.
Since the parade, the Eagles have lost two of their inspirational leaders on defense (Brandon Graham and Gardner), they are most likely to have to cope with the physical after-effects of a grueling 20-game schedule in 2024 and they will do all this with the toughest schedule they have faced in at least a decade.
But a simpler way to look at it is to acknowledge that Howie Roseman built the best roster in the NFL last year. His roster is no longer that. With half the defense gone, they are not even close.
While so many other media types are blocking out all of this basic logic, I see it very clearly.
Of course, I also saw very clearly a freefall last season when the exact opposite happened.
Who knows? I could be wrong again.
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As Mike Sielski pointed out so eloquently in a column over the weekend in The Inquirer, the NFL draft is becoming more and more a circus, with the ringmaster an awkward and cloying commissioner Roger Goodell.
The league boss actually had the gall during the first round to suggest the process of 10 minutes between picks was too long. He proposed an impromptu plan to limit the time to seven minutes, with one chance per draft to extend the time constraint.
Meanwhile, Goodell was bloating the festivities with interruption after interruption for “special” moments honoring players, fans and seemingly anyone else who asked for the draft spotlight.
Hey, the commissioner could cut a few minutes off the time just by offering a stout handshake to each draftee instead of his ridiculously long hugs.
In a world of phonies, there is only one king.
His name is Roger Goodell.
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The last time I looked, Dallas Goedert was an important player on a championship team, a multi-faceted tight end who came up big repeatedly in big moments for two Super Bowl teams (2022, 2024).
So why is he being treated like the ugly stepchild of the Eagles family? Why does his name keep coming up in trade speculation? And – most importantly – why does Howie Roseman keep feeding the rumors instead of squashing them?
Throughout the draft process, Goedert appeared to be the odd man out, for no good reason beyond his $14-million annual salary. No one will argue that he is anything less than an excellent contributor to the offense, both as a pass-catcher and blocker.
Unlike Gardner-Johnson, Goedert is also a consummate team player. Do you ever remember him whining about how often he was ignored by play-callers who were too busy placating his more vocal teammates?
No, you don’t, because it never happened.
Here’s what Roseman had to say about Goedert after the draft: “Dallas is part of the team as we speak. Obviously, as we go forward, we’re going to continue to address things on this team, and right now nothing further.”
Huh? Did Goedert give Howie a wedgie? Did the loyal tight end use the wrong fork for his salad at one of owner Jeff Lurie’s fancy dinners? What could possibly have happened for the Eagles to treat Goedert with such disrespect?
I have no clue. All I can say is, Dallas Goedert deserves better than he’s been getting from the Eagles lately. Much better.
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The biggest story of the 2025 draft was the snub of Shedeur Sanders, once believed to be a potential No. 1 pick who instead faced the humiliation of dropping all the way to No. 144, a fifth-round mercy selection by the Cleveland Browns.
The crew at ESPN was agitated by the drop of such a charismatic player – especially a foaming-at-the-mouth Mel Kiper – but none had basic honesty to acknowledge what was actually happening.
Yes, Shedeur was getting passed over because he acted like a jerk during the interview process before the draft, but that is hardly the entire story.
The real focus of the snub was his blowhard father, Deion Sanders, who was perceived as a bigger part of a package deal with his son, a deal no team – including his beloved Cowboys – wanted to deal with until the fifth round
Believe it or not, I became a fan of Shedeur during the draft – out of sympathy if nothing else.
I hope he defies the experts and becomes a star.
Maybe then his father will finally shut up.
We can only hope. . . . .