Howie Roseman and Nick Sirianni

Q. Howie, obviously you guys have made more trades than anybody over the years. How did you kind of realize the value of trades? At what point, where did that come from, and just kind of what they enable you to do. (Reuben Frank)

HOWIE ROSEMAN: Maybe that’s an example of being an outsider and looking at the league when I was studying it before I got into the league, and then coming into the league and understanding that there were opportunities to maybe get aggressive. With that also comes risk, right? All those moves don’t always work out and it’s probably more conservative to just stand pat and stay where you are, whether it’s with players on your team or during the draft and kind of see what comes to you.

When you trade up in a draft, you’ve got to deal with the consequences of who ends up being there with the slot you move out on. Sometimes you say, ‘Man, I could have sat there and got this player,’ and so you have to deal with that, too. For me, I think that being aggressive has always been part of my DNA and I feel fortunate that I have people around me who support that in [Head] Coach [Nick Sirianni] and [Chairman/CEO] Jeffrey [Lurie], and it allows us to take chances and to try to be aggressive.

Q. Do you think there’s a chance for you guys to get first round talent considering where you’re picking from, and whether it’s someone that maybe drops for whatever reason– off the field, whatever concerns there might be about that. Do you think you guys have the ability to get first round talent? (Jeff McLane)

HOWIE ROSEMAN: The way we go into looking in the draft is we always take the worst case scenario and work back from that, and we’ve got to be really comfortable with whatever is our worst case scenario, which will always entail getting a good player. There’s never 32 first round grades on our board. We don’t have 32 first round grades in this draft, so obviously it depends on how things go. You go through a lot of hypotheticals, you try to put yourself in any possible position so that you’re ready to execute.

Just even looking at last year, the guys that we thought were most realistic being available at 22, we feel like we got fortunate to get one of the guys that we didn’t have in a lot of the scenarios, so luck plays a part in it. Obviously, everyone’s looking at things differently. Everyone has a different vision for what they’re looking for their team. Everyone has a different vision for the particular players that they’re looking at and you just hope that that makes sense for your football team.

Q. You were talking about trades. This is the first time since the merger that nobody’s traded out of the first round yet. Does that tell you anything? You’ve been doing this for a long time. Does that give you a hint about the draft class or anything of that nature? (John McMullen)

HOWIE ROSEMAN: No, a lot of those trades happen the year before, so they really talk about last year’s draft class. A lot of the times when you’re trading a future first round pick, you’re doing it the year prior, so those teams are getting those and usually that happens for quarterbacks.

I think it talks more about last year’s draft class and how six quarterbacks went in I think the first 12 picks, and a lot of times that you’ll have some teams that will move in from the late teens or the twenties and the way to do that is trade a future first. So, that’s normally how that occurs. I think that a lot of the trades that happen for jockey and position on draft day are closer– unless it’s the first pick, are closer to the draft or during the draft because you don’t know where guys go.

Q. At this time last year, we were actually talking a couple hours before with WR DeVonta Smith with his extension and that had come a couple of weeks before the fifth-year option on deadline. With DT Jordan Davis, unless there’s any news on him, what makes the differences between those two situations and how influential will the draft be in your decision on whether to pick up his option? (Brooks Kubena)

HOWIE ROSEMAN: Just to be consistent, we’re not going to talk about any particular player in their contract situations. I would have to go back and look at what you’re saying there. I’m probably not educated enough right now to talk about specifically how that worked with DeVonta, but at the time, obviously we were nearing completion on DeVonta’s extension. I don’t know the timing of if we exercised the option at the same time that we executed the extension, which I think we did, but I’d probably have to look at that and get back to you on that.

Q. What’s the value of the Top-30 visits for you? How predictive have you found them to be? And was there a point earlier in your career where you were using them more, I don’t want to say subterfuge, but they kind of throw teams off. (Zach Berman)

HOWIE ROSEMAN: Yeah, don’t say subterfuge because then I’m going to have to have Nick [Sirianni] look it up on his phone when you don’t ask him questions.

I think that we have changed a little bit in how we approach the Top-30. Like everything, it’s an information gathering process for us. The whole draft process is gathering information, constantly gathering information. Nick and I are on the phone all the time talking to people that we know in college football, trying to get to know these guys as well as we can so we can make good decisions. So for us, it’s really just trying to fill in a lot of the blanks and the more we get to know people, the more that we expose them to not only us but people around us, the better we get a feel for them. So we think they’re incredibly valuable for us.

Obviously, everyone’s got their own way of looking at things, but at the same time, we only have 30 of them. We’ve got to do more work on a lot more guys in this draft than just the 30 guys that come here. But, we like that process and we really like involving everyone in the building. We have a really good building, we have really good people who have good instincts on people, good instincts in their field, and being able to utilize those people in our building, see how they operate with the people that they would have to be dealing with every day, we think is a valuable part of the process.

Q. How would you describe the nature with TE Dallas Goedert right now? How does that affect the approach at that position going into the draft? (Dave Zangaro)

HOWIE ROSEMAN: The way we look at the draft is it’s a separate entity to anything else that’s going on. We’ve got to make good decisions in the draft based on who the players are that are available in the draft. We can’t make up any positions and make them better than they’re not. We have to really have a true process.

So, it really doesn’t affect us. We try to do as much as we can at any position in free agency to try to make sure that we’re not in a position where there are needs. Of course, we’re not a perfect team and there’s always going to be areas that we’re looking to improve, and honestly, that’s going to happen even the day after the draft. We’re going to continue to have areas that when we look at our depth chart, we’ll go, ‘Man, it would be great to add a player here.’ The player acquisition period is a huge part of it, but it’s certainly not the end.

Q. You said in a podcast not long ago that drafting or bringing in a player who had committed violence against women was a non-starter for you guys. What’s the standard by which you judge that? And what I mean is a player could be accused, a player could be charged, have charges dismissed, could have pleaded out something. What’s the standard that you use to judge that? (Mike Sielski)

HOWIE ROSEMAN: I’ve learned a lot about podcasts here in the last couple of weeks. I guess they can take parts of the podcast and use them and actually publicize them. Welcome to 2025, Howie Roseman.

We have a process, we have an objective process that we use. We live in a country where you’re innocent until proven guilty, and so we try to abide by the judicial process. But I think to get into the details of what we do, that’s part of our internal dynamics that I probably wouldn’t want to get into.

But certainly we try not to make it subjective, is basically what I would say, [so we don’t] get in a situation where we really like a player [and] make excuses for that player. So, we try to have objective criteria when it comes to the issues that you’re asking me about, but it is important to us, the people that we bring in this building and that we know we can win with really good people. We also know that young people make mistakes in other areas, but that was one that was on my heart when I was talking about it and something that we believe in as an organization.

Q. Is it a situation where you have this process and you apply it on a case-by-case basis and then kind of weigh that criteria for each individual player? (Mike Sielski)

HOWIE ROSEMAN: Again, try to make it as objective as possible so that we’re not getting into the specifics of each incident.

Q. You guys have stockpiled a number of picks. I think you have 20 between this year and next year. What is the value of having all those picks, besides obviously having more picks? Do you see them as trade material? (Martin Frank)

HOWIE ROSEMAN: Everything you’ll say, I’ll say yes to. Picks are valuable and you can use them to obviously pick players, you can use them to trade for players, you can package them to move up in the draft. The more picks that you take, the better chance you have of hitting on players.

Where we are right now, we have a lot of good players that have earned their paychecks. We have others coming up through that will be in position to earn paychecks. We want to get as many young talented players on this roster as we can to add competition, which is one of Coach’s core values, and also because of the financial situation that we’re going to have going forward in our effort to try to win another championship for the city.

Q. When you’re watching tight end tape, what characteristics do you think in a tight end are important to translate to success in the NFL? What are some characteristics you really like in the tight end position for your team? (Eliot Shorr-Parks)

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, that’s a good question, Elliot. A lot of things play into it. Obviously when you’re watching, it always starts with talent, but what I’ve come to just be fascinated about are all the things that play into it and all the things that Howie and his staff look at when drafting players. I mean, they put so much stock into it all. There’s so many different things that put stock into the players’ Football IQ, the players’ mental, the players’ health, the players. I mean the list goes on and on and it’s just an awesome process that so many people are involved in.

As far as just the tight end itself, you naturally are going to start with — it’s kind of like the receiver room it takes, you don’t have to have one guy that fits all, right? You can use different pieces of a guy to help accomplish the job, whether that is in the past game with speed or change of direction or the ability with the ball in his hand.

So again, you’re just trying to fill all the spots that you would use for a tight end, but then sometimes you get a tight end that is unique and you haven’t used certain things with that tight end before, but you’re like, ‘Well, this guy can do some receiver stuff or running back stuff,’ or whatever it is.

Our job as coaches is to take the players that we have, the talented players that we have and find ways that make it work. But naturally, I always will start with their targets and the things that, the balls that went their way throughout a game. You’re always looking for – I mean, anytime I’m writing reports, it feels like I say ‘big, strong, fast, physical, tough’ usually succeeds and that’s pretty much the case with every position.

Looking for a lot of different things, but I’m always looking for a guy that can make plays with the ball in his hand and then have the ability to first of all be a factor in the run game and helping you out in the run game, which is one of the harder matchups in the NFL, right? A defensive end versus a tight end, and there’s other ways around that and then not being a liability in the run game.

Q. Sort of along those lines, I think you drafted just the one tight end since you took TE Dallas Goedert in 2018. What’s your evaluation of that position relative to the draft and how deep of a class of tight ends do you think this is? (Ed Kracz)

HOWIE ROSEMAN: I think for us, I’ve been very fortunate to have the caliber of tight end play that we’ve had here. When I first became GM, [former Eagles TE] Brent Celek, obviously an unbelievable player, then to [former Eagles TE and Washington Commanders TE] Zach Ertz, then to [TE] Dallas Goedert. Three really unbelievable players and people that we’ve had here.

So we’ve been very fortunate with the caliber of tight end play. I mean you mentioned [TE] Grant [Calcaterra] and obviously we all see the strides that he took last year as well. So it’s got to be based on the board that we have and the value in the draft and we will stack it based on not needs, but based on the value of the players in this draft and this class.

Certainly when we talk about how the class looks, it all depends on who’s there when you’re picking. So we’ve been in situations where we think it’s a really good class at a certain position and then when we’re picking, it just hasn’t worked out that the caliber players met the value of the pick. So I think that that’s how we kind of judge the class is wherever we’re picking, what’s the caliber of player at that point in time.

Q. With more transfers in the college game, how has that changed the evaluation process for you guys and looking into that? (Jeff McLane)

HOWIE ROSEMAN: Information gathering is a huge part of what we do and knowing the person as well as the player is the seesaw that we’re trying to balance. When they go into the transfer portal and they’re at schools for a shorter period of time and it’s easier for them over that short period of time to put out their best foot forward.

Our scouts do a huge job all the time about knowing the player and knowing the person. And for us, we’ll get a lot of eyes on the player, but we are not fortunate enough to step on many college campuses during the fall. So we really rely on those guys and they do a tremendous job of gathering information on the person and the fit for us. Again, there’s a lot of flavors that go on in the National Football League and we just want the right fits for the Philadelphia Eagles.

There are going to be a lot of good players drafted by a lot of teams that aren’t going to come to Philadelphia and we just got to make sure that the people we bring in are the right players for us.

Q. Howie, how much has the interior defensive line position changed since you started doing that as far as the skill set these guys have coming out and just the value of that spot? (Reuben Frank)

HOWIE ROSEMAN: Yeah, I’ve been here long enough to have been around a bunch of first round picks in Philadelphia, defensive tackles, and obviously interior pass rush is a huge deal in the National Football League. Getting quick pressure on quarterbacks is a huge deal, and I think you’ve seen our resources shift that way a little bit here in the last few years because that’s the quickest way to really get pressure and you want both. We’ve been fortunate to have both for a long period of time, but you got to continue to refresh those positions and continue to build depths along both your lines. So I think for us, we feel like having good players at those positions and obviously we have a bunch returning on our roster that we’re excited about, but those are huge spots for us to continue to grow and the best place to find them is in the draft. Those markets are expensive when you get into free agency.

Q. How would you return to fifth year options, if I’m not mistaken? I think you did use it in the extension with WR DeVonta Smith, but just in a general sense, in a general sense, you got probably four guys first rounders that would be up for that kind. How do you see the fifth year option as a tool in team building? (Brooks Kubena)

HOWIE ROSEMAN: Well, it’s only a tool if the player’s a good player. At the end of the day, it goes back to making the right picks and picking the right person and the right player and ensuring that we have the right process to do that. That’s the work that we’re doing now that we’ve been doing for a long time here. You need a little luck that players that are good people and players fall to you in the draft. So when those things combine, that gives you an opportunity to keep guys on your team for the long term.

Q. Does that factor into what we want to trade out of the first round, losing that possibility? (Brooks Kubena)

HOWIE ROSEMAN: Well, it would be depending like anything on the offer. So I think for us, all those deals are based on the circumstances regarding the situation, what you’re giving up, what you’re getting in return, what your board looks like. When you’re in a situation where you’re at your pick and there’s a guy that you think is a Pro Bowl caliber player, an unbelievable person, those guys are hard to pass on. If you have a group of players that are in the same range and that you’d be really excited about getting and you can get more value, you can get more currency, then you look at trading back when your board starts to fall off and you have one guy that you feel really strong about, you look at moving up. Those are really the conversations that we’re having at all time in the draft room.

Q. Maybe a few weeks ago T Lane Johnson mentioned he really welcomed the opportunity to train and work with his eventual replacement. Having seen that play out at a few other positions in recent years, how valuable is that? (Dave Zangaro)

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, I think that one of the best tools that we have as coaches is the tape, right? Is the tape that we watch. A lot of us are visual learners. We’re able to evaluate the tape and whether it’s in practice, whether it’s in the draft, whatever it is, and say, here’s what you did right? Here’s what you did wrong and it’s right there on the tape. That’s a tool that every coach uses. Well, the next step of that is being able to dive into what that player is thinking. So sometimes that, hey, what this player was thinking on this play was this, this is what we taught him on this play. But to have the guy in there, whether it’s [former Eagles C] Jason Kelce with [C] Cam [Jurgens], or whether it’s [former Eagles DT Fletcher Cox] Fletch with [DT] Jalen Carter or [DT] Jordan Davis, whether it’s [former Eagles DE Brandon Graham] BG with [OLB] Nolan [Smith], to be able to watch that tape to show the standard of what something looks like and hey, ‘this is exactly the way we want this play to look like here, watch BG right here.’

Now, to be able for Nolan to be able to go, or [OLB] Jalyx [Hunt] to be able to go to BG and say, ‘why did you do it that way?’ I saw what had happened, take me through that process. That is a huge, huge tool and advantage that we’ve been able to have here for the past, since I’ve been here because of the great players that we have. So again, it’s just such valuable information to be able to watch the tape boom, but then to have the guy that’s actually doing it on there, sitting right next to you in the meeting.

Q. How much input do you take from someone like Offensive Coordinator Kevin Patullo? Obviously you’ve known him for a number of years. You kind of know how he thinks, as opposed to maybe the year before with former Offensive Coordinator Kellen Moore, coming in from outside, as to what you might be looking for in the draft? (Martin Frank)

NICK SIRIANNI: Again, I can’t say enough of how many parallels there are between the draft process and a weekly game plan. Every stone is worked diligently to overturn it.

Is that right? I don’t even think that’s the right way to say it. (smiling.)

HOWIE ROSEMAN: I was thinking about when you say to me during the season, ‘I want to sit down and talk to you for 45 minutes about everything.’ (laughing.)

NICK SIRIANNI: And there’s no time for that. (laughing.)

HOWIE ROSEMAN: And then in the draft week, you want to do the same. (laughing.)

NICK SIRIANNI: So there’s just so much to the process. I just watch in awe with Howie], just all the information that he gets, all the information that he gathers from his scouts, and all the tape that he watches.

I mean, he watches – every time I’m in his office, he’s watching. ‘Hey, look at this guy.’

There’s so much work that is done for the draft, and he does a great job of using everybody. We obviously talk a ton, and we think back to all the players that we’ve drafted here over the past four or five years. Like, ‘Hey, remember the conversation we had about this player or that player?’ Those are awesome conversations, but then he just does a great job of listening to everybody’s input.

The same thing – him and [Run Game Coordinator/Offensive Line Coach Jeff Stoutland] Stout have been together forever. The longer you’ve been with somebody and the more you understand their point of view and their biases and their different things that they look at and how they evaluate guys, the more stock you put into that, as far as it goes with me.

So Kevin and I have been together for a long time. I know how he looks at players. I know what players he’s probably not going to like. He probably knows what players I’m not going to like. Howie definitely knows what players I’m not going to like, and he knows what players I’m going to like.

And so that time that you’ve spent with guys, you’re able to – I think of one great tool that Howie always says, ‘Who does this guy remind you of?’

Well, when you’ve been around somebody like Kevin and I have been together, we have a lot of guys from the Colts, a lot of guys from the Eagles that we’re like, ‘Hey, this guy reminds me of this player or that player.’
So I think it’s an advantage when you’ve had that time with somebody, and I feel like our coaches did a really good job of evaluating guys and giving their side of the input to it. And it’s just a piece of the puzzle. Like I said, I can’t say enough of how in awe I am of how the draft works and all the things that Howie uses and does to help bring good players in.

Q. In these past few years, you’ve added, I believe, 15 former first or second round picks. A, what’s behind that strategy? And B, how do these draft evals now factor into down the road decisions? (Zach Berman)

HOWIE ROSEMAN: Yeah, start with A. All of those are independent evaluations and independent opportunities that you’re going for. When we’re looking to bring in guys here, we’re looking for talent. It’s hard to play in the NFL. It’s hard to play at a high level in the NFL.

So usually guys who get drafted high, part of the evaluation is the talent that they have in their body. So when you get a second chance on some of those guys, then you go into part B, which is all the work that we do.

I mean, we’re going to have some extraordinary amount of reports in the system. Let’s use 500 as a round number. And at the end of the day, we will have, as it stands now, eight chances to select guys off the board. And then we’ll have somewhere between 12 and 20 free agents – can’t give you the exact number – that we’ll sign after the draft.

So really, we’re talking about 20 to 25 selections that we’ll make over the draft weekend, which I’m excited about. I love that. But when you think about the overall work that gets in, it doesn’t really relate to that total number.

Where it does come in is the other opportunities, the other talent acquisition periods, whether it’s at the waiver wire in August, whether it’s on practice squads, whether it’s for trades, whether it’s when they become unrestricted free agents.

And so we have this body of work that we can pull back up and that we can go back and understand the work that our scouts did on their character, on their work ethic. We have what we have on them as player evaluations coming out of college. We have now player evaluations of them as pro players. And so all of that goes into how we acquire players going forward once they enter the NFL.

Q. There have been reports that some teams, because of character issues, are taking Walter Nolen off their board. I guess the same kind of held true for another defensive tackle, DT Jalen Carter, that you guys took. What gives you guys the ability to kind of see through those types of concerns that other teams have and look at it differently and think that, okay, this is a guy that we’re willing to take a chance on? (Jeff McLane)

HOWIE ROSEMAN: Well, again, it starts with, we do have objective criteria that we look at to take players off our board. So it’s very easy for us to get into individual arguments or make excuses for guys based on subjective factors, and I think that’s really hard to do.

So for us, we start with these basic principles of, we will not draft because of this. And when we get past those guys, then we obviously have a process that we go through.

That starts with [Senior Advisor to the General Manager/Chief Security Officer/Gameday Coaching Operations] Dom [DiSandro]. I don’t think there’s any doubt that he’s the best in the National Football League, and in my opinion, really all of sports, in what he does. His ability to not only gather information, but to have a feel for people.

And then we just have to make judgements. And in those situations, those are a little bit more subjective, and that’s based on all the information that we get. We’ll have a bunch of those in this draft, just like there are in every draft, and we’re just trying to do whatever we can to increase the odds that we hit on a player. And talent’s a big part of this. The person’s a big part of this.

Q. When you look at edge rushers, there’s a few guys specifically in this class who don’t have a ton of stack production or pressures. What do you have to see out of them that makes you feel comfortable projecting that going forward, that there will be more production? (Cayden Steele)

HOWIE ROSEMAN: First thing you have to figure out is what they’re being asked to do. I think there are certain defensive college schemes that try to maximize their players in other ways. We’ve had schemes here that are asking our defensive players to have different responsibilities, so we’ve got to first understand what their job description is.

We also have to see them in those specific situations. We will make tapes that are a 3rd-and-5 plus. What do these guys look like when they’re in must-pass situations? The tools in their body.

I think that we get a lot of information through this process from watching them do drills, figuring out who has vision for the quarterback. So certainly production’s a part of what we’re looking for on guys, but there are also extenuating circumstances.

Q. Last time you won the Super Bowl, you had perhaps your best draft thereafter, which seems counterintuitive because you’re drafting at the bottom. The flip side is, there’s usually a better depth chart when you’re a good team. What are the lessons when you’re drafting 32, 31 overall? (Zach Berman)

HOWIE ROSEMAN: Yeah, I think that you have to be patient, one. You have to allow things to come to you. The chances that you’re trading up into the top 10, top 15, top 20 are slim. That’s hard to do. So you have to really kind of understand the strengths of the draft.

You have to spend a lot of time being realistic about who you think you have an opportunity to get so you can spend a lot of time with them. I think that when we look back at those two drafts, when we were picking 32, and I think we were 30 that year because a pick was forfeited, they were two different examples because in that ‘18 draft, we didn’t have a lot of picks. We had given them up. So we had an opportunity at the end of the first round to move back.

But I think we got very fortunate that the guys that we had a lot of passion for, especially on the third day, were available, and we were able to target them and go get them. And we were fortunate that we had a couple of first round picks when we came back in 2023, and we had good players at those positions too.

So it’s not my best quality, patience, but I think in this situation, understanding the reality of where we are in the draft, what’s going to be available to us potentially, and making sure we know those guys backwards and forwards.