April 26, 2026
I have a confession to make. After it became official that the Eagles had traded up for a wide receiver in the first round of the NFL draft last Thursday night, I didn’t really give a damn about everything that followed.
Unfortunately, the biggest move of the off-season was no longer deniable:
Goodbye, A.J. Brown, the most talented pass catcher in Eagles history.
Hello, mediocrity.
This era of elite success for the Eagles is over now, at least in my mind, and all of the blather in the months ahead will not alter that sad truth.
When GM Howie Roseman moved up three slots by trading two fourth-round picks to the (ugh) Cowboys for the right to draft a small but talented receiver from USC named Makai Lemon, an era unceremoniously ended. The magical run of Super-Bowl contention that started in 2022 had yielded place to an ill-conceived retooling of the roster.
Ironically, most fans who saw the way Howie snatched Lemon right out of the grasp of the Steelers saw yet another reason to cheer the diabolical nature of our brilliant GM. Yes, Howie is great at the draft. No argument there.
But totally lost in the outpouring of fan joy was a question with only one answer: Are the Eagles better now than they were before the swap of Brown for Lemon?
Of course not. His huge baggage aside, No. 11 was the target every fan clamored for on third down in big moments. He was big with great hands and loved to bully the ball away from smaller defensive backs. He was Philly tough.
Lemon is also a fearless ballhawk who will help unfairly-maligned quarterback Jalen Hurts by adding a weapon to a still-formidable arsenal. But don’t kid yourself. As a 195-pound rookie, he is 40 pounds lighter and seven years less experienced than Brown.
If you watch Lemon’s college tape, you will see him line up most often in the slot, like most undersized receivers. No slot receiver is going to replace Brown’s ability to wrestle 50-50 balls away from defenders. No 195-pound wideout is going to scare defenses the way Brown does.
Second, now the Eagles have bookends at wide receiver, pairing Lemon with DeVonta Smith, who is even smaller at 170 pounds. As the new No. 1 pass catcher, Smith will be dealing with the top corners now, weakening that position, too.
And third, the theme that keeps getting lost during this grim off-season, is that trading Brown is a major setback for head coach Nick Sirianni, whose one strength – at least in theory – is that he creates a clubhouse culture that blends all of the disparate personalities, including outliers like A.J.
Brown is leaving because Sirianni failed to quell the receiver’s selfish tendencies, failed to fortify a bond between the team’s top receiver and Hurts, and failed to provide the proper offensive leadership to keep together a pairing that made it to two Super Bowls and won one.
Roseman took a major step back when he decided to move on from Brown, and his timing is all wrong. Retooling now – with an offensive line in disarray featuring aging veterans pondering retirement and the coach who molded them, Jeff Stoutland, gone – is illogical.
Yes, the Eagles got younger by swapping out Brown, 28, for Lemon, 21.
But if you think they somehow got better, congrats are in order. You are a loyal and devoted fan. You love the Eagles in good times and bad. You bleed green.
You are also delusional.
The rest of the draft, an afterthought in the big picture, got lots of Howie media love, as usual. Maybe it’s just because I’m still mourning the imminent departure of Brown, but I still see nothing but potholes in this offseason plan.
The other big move after Lemon was the trade for Vikings edge rusher Jonathan Greenard. I have no problem with giving up two third-round picks for an established veteran player, but I am flabbergasted by the new contract Howie handed to a recent underachiever.
After a three-sack season marred by a shoulder injury that cost him the final three games, Greenard was handed a four-year, $100-million deal, making him the fourth-highest-paid Eagles behind only Hurts, Jordan Davis and DeVonta Smith.
Supposedly, this is a below-market expense, given that ex-Eagle DE Jaelan Phillips just signed a $120-million agreement with Carolina. Really? So we’re supposed to believe Greenard does all of the things required of a pass rusher almost as well as Phillips?
Obviously, the Vikings don’t agree. Neither do I.
The rest of the draft was a snooze. A tight end, Eli Stowers of Vanderbilt, who will no doubt end the tenure of underrated (and underpaid) Dallas Goedert after this season. Roseman finally offered a life raft to his eroding offensive line with tackle Markel Bell of Miami. So Bell is going to replace Lane Johnson soon? Good luck with that.
I won’t belabor this analysis with the later picks, since they are, and will always be, lottery tickets. None of the remaining players will help the Eagles this season. That’s all I care about, and – given the age of the many veteran players – that’s all you should care about, too.
(Of course, there was one moment of levity in the fifth round when Roseman drafted another North Dakota State quarterback, lefty Cole Payton, a decade after bringing Carson Wentz to Philly. At least Howie has a sense of humor.)
Cast aside for a moment all of the draft grades and other useless noise about this draft; no one is about to criticize Roseman after his recent successes picking the right college kids, anyway. The hard, cold truth will be much harder for Eagles fans to accept.
The 2026 Eagles will try to make it back to the Super Bowl without their best wide receiver, with an offensive line in major decline and with another play-caller who has never, at any level, called plays.
I will hedge no bets here. This Eagles roster is not going far in the playoffs, if it makes it there at all. The run was exciting while it lasted.
Goodbye, A.J.
Hello, mediocrity.
More thoughts during a busy month in sports:
- Am I the only skeptic having flashbacks to 2010 as the Flyers continue to revive interest in hockey here? Back then, the last time they made it to the Stanley Cup Finals, the Flyers shocked the Bruins by coming back from an 0-3 deficit in the Eastern Conference semifinals. Will the Penguins replicate that feat after staving off elimination on Saturday night? Naw. No way. Not a chance. (I hope.)
- I don’t get every prediction right – not even close – but you’ve got to admit I saw this sudden reemergence of Joel Embiid in the playoffs from a full week away. He always looks for drama, and what’s more exciting than crawling off the operating table (for appendicitis) and boldly returning to the court? I guarantee this will happen sometime this week, if not tonight.
- If we ever have a nuclear war, I will seek the immediate company of Rob Thomson, who would play the role of a cockroach in that scenario – the lone survivor. If a 10-game losing streak wasn’t enough to convince GM Dave Dombrowski to end the suffering, nothing will. Seek shelter immediately, Phillies fans. The aftershocks to this lost Thomson era will be brutal.
- The good news after a new set of damning photos emerged last week is that NFL Insider Dianna Russini has disappeared from social media after her shrill (and bogus) recent denial of an affair with New England coach Mike Vrabel. If she still thinks making out with a source is acting professionally, it’s just as well she vanishes from our consciousness as soon as possible.
- As for Vrabel, wow. There are frauds, and then there’s him. Now he’s going to hide behind emergency therapy to right his errant ways. It’s so urgent, he missed the final day of the draft. I’ll make a prediction here, too. Mike Vrabel will never make it back to the Super Bowl with the Patriots. Justice will be served. Good riddance to him, too.