It was a disappointing campaign for the Philadelphia Eagles and their fans as the team finished with a 9-8 record during the regular season and barely squeaked into the playoffs. They were quickly eliminated in the Wild Card Round by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, having failed to win a postseason game since 2018.
While supporters may have been expecting the team to splash the cash during free agency and sign several important players, it has been a rather quiet offseason for the Eagles thus far. Fans shouldn’t panic though, according to the team’s general manager and executive vice-president, Howie Roseman.
“We looked into a bunch of opportunities,” Roseman told reporters on Monday afternoon, via NBC. “Some of them we felt like just weren’t the right fit for us, whether from a cost perspective or a position perspective. I would just say this: we’re not even to April. We are working every day. We are not going to stop working.”
The Eagles are being cautious not to sign someone out of panic and pay the price for it later. It has become quite clear that they want to ensure that whoever they do bring on board is the right fit for the organization. There are still several weeks before the 2022 NFL Draft takes place as well and Philadelphia hold three picks in the opening round – numbers 15, 16 and 19.
“I think the other part of this is when you have the amount of high picks we have, we don’t want to block these players from playing,” Roseman said. “We don’t want to get in a situation where we’re drafting guys in the first, second, sometimes even the third round and they don’t have an ability to play because you’re wasting a contract year. That gives us the opportunity to draft guys and to play early in a contract, which we think is an important part of the team-building process we’re in.”
It makes sense that the team would rather fill the holes in their roster with talented rookies than expensive free agents. It could turn out to be a disaster if a rookie is forced to sit on the bench the entire season because the Eagles decided to go sign a top free agent prior to drafting him.
“We’ve got to learn from mistakes when we force positions. When we’re in a position where we’ve got to have a guy it doesn’t work,” Roseman continued. “I think that you see, still in free agency, if we wanted to circle back at some of the positions people perceive there’s a need, there’s still guys there. A lot of these (are) veteran guys and they’re smart enough to say, ‘Hey, I’m going to wait and see in the draft. See if teams draft these guys and what the best spot is for me as well.’
“I think that for us, we know that there are other opportunities to do it. We don’t go into the draft and say, holy cow, we have to draft this position or the team is freaking going to fall apart this year. Again, we’re building. We’re not saying we’re putting all our chips into the middle of the table this year. We want to win. We want to have a really good team but we also want to do the right things.”
Roseman has been the Eagles’ general manager since 2010, helping them win their first Super Bowl in 2018.
