Howie Roseman and Nick Sirianni

Howie Roseman: Morning. We’ll start off with we have one player with a designation. [LB Nakobe] Dean will start camp on PUP. He’s doing a great job with his rehab. Can’t wait to get him back. Other than that, everyone else will be on the field.

Q. Full Attendance then? (Jimmy Kempski)

Howie Roseman: Full attendance.

Q. So LB Jihaad Campbell will be on the field? (Reporter)

Howie Roseman: Everyone else will be on the field.

Q. Howie, when you built this roster, curious how you took into effect how young you are on the defensive side of the ball if you’re comfortable, obviously made a couple of moves yesterday. (John McMullen)

Howie Roseman: Yeah, I think that when you look at how we’re built offensively, a lot of guys that are in the prime of their careers that we’re coming up on free agency, so we extended them and we look at our resources, whether it’s draft picks or money, all kind of in the same boat. So if you’re taking guys in the first round, to us that’s the same as paying guys big money on their contracts. We still have a lot of resources on defensive side of the ball, a lot of young players, a lot of people who have played together, which is exciting and obviously great opportunity for them.

Q. Nick, you said one of your many messages at the end of mini-camp was for the guys show up in great shape. How have you seen the conditioning test and everybody showing up? (John Clark)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, I think the guys have worked hard to put themselves in position to start camp. So all the guys came back in really good shape, weighing what they’re supposed to weigh, doing really well on the conditioning test and that’s what camp’s for too.

I know these guys worked hard to be ready for that, but we’ll do a lot of things in the weight room on the practice field that are going to emphasize that conditioning. I think it’s very clear the way we want to play football with great physicality, with great detail, with great effort. There’s no substitute there. You have to be in great shape. So we’ll continue to push these guys to be in great shape and I think we are off to a good start based off the conditioning test yesterday.

Q. Nick with LB Nakobe Dean on PUP, how do you feel like the linebacker position is positioned right now, especially for the early parts of the season? (Brooks Kubena)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, I’m excited about that entire room. It’ll be fun to get out there and compete and that’s what it is. That’s what training camp is, is competition competing every day. That’s what the season is. It’s great preparation for the season when you’re competing your butt off to get ready to play each game and during each game.

So I’m really excited about that room. You got some guys back for their second, third year, but then you also got some young guys that I’m really excited about to see and I know [Inside Linebackers Coach] Bobby King and [Assistant Linebackers Coach] Ronell [Williams] will do a great job. Obviously the linebacker position is [Defensive Coordinator] Vic [Fangio’s] specialty as well. He’ll have his hands all over that as well and excited to see how these guys develop and that’s our job, [Executive Vice President/General Manager] Howie [Roseman] gets us great players and you can’t be great without great players, that’s for sure. But our job is to develop them to become even better players through their fundamentals, through their awareness of the offense and the defense, through their situational football awareness. So that’s what this time’s for.

Q. Is LB Jihaad Campbell ready to go? (Bob Brookover)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, you’re going to see him out there today, like Howie said and it’ll be fun to get him out there and start working with him. He looked like he had a great summer and excited to have him out there working.

Q. How good of an opportunity is this for LB Jihaad Campbell, being able to practice the first day? (Martin Frank)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, anytime you’re able to step out into the field, it’s huge, right? Because we look at every day of how we’re trying to get better. Our goals in training camp are to get in great shape, playing shape. They came back ready for the conditioning test, they’re in good shape, but now it’s time to get in great playing shape. It’s a little bit different to work with great detail, doing the ordinary things better than anybody else does it. How do we tackle better? How do we take care of the football better? How do we take the football away better? How do we fit blocks better? How do we take better angles on tackles? Those will be emphasized. Then how are you coming together as a football team each and every day? That’s so important at this time to come together as a football team and you do that through suffering together. Training camp. Football practice isn’t fun all the time, right? Training camp’s not fun all the time, but you suffer together to come closer together. So not only Jihaad but our entire team. We’re trying to focus on that conditioning our detail and also coming together as a football team.

Q. What went into the promotions in football ops and how involved is Senior Personnel Director/Advisor to the General Manager Joe Douglas? (Bo Wulf)

Howie Roseman: In terms of the promotions in football ops all earned, all the people that got promoted did it because of the work that they’ve done and just like we evaluate our players, we evaluate everyone in our front office.

In terms of [Senior Personnel Director/Advisor to the General Manager] Joe Douglas obviously personally, very excited for him to be back. Unbelievable knowledge of this league. Will be a great resource for all of our scouts, all our front office people having another GM in the building who can help develop our staff because our staff development’s a big thing and he’ll be involved like a lot of the other people.

Every decision that we make, we talk about, we discuss. Obviously I’m responsible at the end of the day for that, but couldn’t be more excited to have him back along with the rest of the staff that came back very fortunate that we didn’t get totally decimated though we did lose a couple of really good people that I’ll miss.

Q. What has made Vic Fangio so good at developing talent? (Dave Zangaro)

Nick Sirianni: Just great football coaches. There’s a lot that goes into it, right? I think a lot of people think it’s just about scheme. Obviously his scheme’s really good and obviously his scheme is tried and copied across the entire league and so he has a great scheme, but all the little things of the fundamentals and the detail of how he tries to get guys better that way.

So every time I’m looking at a football coach, do they have good scheme and can they get the players better and can they relate to the players? And I think we see that all those things with Vic.

Q. Speaking of the loss, [Las Vegas Raiders Senior Personnel Executive] Anthony Patch has been on your staff For a long time, what led to that happening? (Jeff McLane)

Howie Roseman: [Las Vegas Raiders Senior Personnel Executive Anthony] Patch had been, he and I had been together really since I started. I was here maybe six months before he came in. Incredible person, incredible friend, incredible resource for me.

It was just an opportunity for him to really kind of put his spin on a team that really needed him, get closer to home, he’s a west coast guy. I mean when you talk about what we look for in a football team and toughness and character, Anthony Patch represents all of that, this guy has overcome whatever it is to continue to stay loyal to the Eagles win two world championships. I’m going to miss Anthony Patch.

Q. For you personally, How different does the start of the camp field back at the bottom of the mountain after reaching top of the mountain last season? (Dave Uram)

Nick Sirianni: It feels the same. You have a lot of steps to go and daily work to put in. So every year at the training camp feels the same. You’re not looking back, you’re not looking forward, you’re solely focused on today and how we can get better today. So when you have that mindset, when you have that focus that we want to have as a football team, that’s how everyone should be feeling is, hey, how am I getting better today? Not thinking about anything else.

Q. How receptive have your players been of that message? (Jason Dumas)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, I’ve seen them to this point the same way. Very hyper-focused on the day and ready to attack the day.

Q. Howie you’ve always been a general manager that’s signed your draft picks relatively early on after that third year. You did it with C Cam Jurgens this off season. Why is that important for you to sign them early on? (Eliot Shorr-Parks)

Howie Roseman: When you talk about culture, and I think that’s a big picture word that a lot of people throw around and it’s hard to really define what that means, but I think from our perspective, when people understand that when they start here that they have an opportunity to continue here and get rewarded here, it’s incredibly important so that when you draft guys, you can show them examples.

If you do the right thing on and off the field, we’re going to make sure that we keep you here and maybe even have a chance to finish your career here.

I think that just from our perspective and everyone’s got to do things their own way. I’m not saying it’s perfect, we make a lot of mistakes, but from our way that’s a core tenant of what we’re trying to do here. We’re trying to draft, develop, sign. When you do that with players, your opportunity to set up continuity, your ability to really set up leaders for your football team going forward, who can show young players the way and how we do things. I think that gives you a chance to be special.

Q. Now that you’ve had a little time to sort of process everything that was said, done, not done over the off season on the push play, the tush push, whatever you call it, sort of the fever pitch that reached at the March meeting, the May meeting. How do you look back at that now and how do you look forward with that play? (Reporter)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, we just try to continue to get better at that football play and the compliments that come off of it. There’s so many things that are out of your control and you just truly have to focus on the things that you can control. I mean that’s good with everything with that. That’s a good preview of how the season happens. There’s things that are going to be out of your control and you got to focus on the next play and that’s all we’ve tried to do.

Q. [Reporter John McMullen] asked Howie a minute to go about the defense. What do you like about it? You got the youngest defense league at this point. What do you like about that? (Reuben Frank)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, again, you like the first and foremost the talent of the guys that we have out there. Obviously every guy is here for a reason picked by Howie and our team and so excited about them and that and then their mindset of the type of people they are.

So just excited to work with that group. We played young guys last year. Again, we’ll play the guys that best help us win football games. That’s where we’re in the business of is winning football games. So the best guys that help us win football games will be the guys that are in there, young, old, middle, it doesn’t matter. But that’s what this is about. You got young guys competing against veterans and excited to see how those competitions play themselves out.

Howie Roseman: I would say the other thing with that, is that it’s not like these guys are new to playing with each other. A lot of these guys, when you look down the defensive rosters, they have continuity within each other. You watch some of the guys who played together, whether it was last year or together in college and they have chemistry, they understand what the other guys are thinking. So I think that from that perspective there is some experience together.

Q. You sought out some advice from folks coming off of a championship in terms of messaging. You have a guy sitting next to you who has obviously lived through it with a different coaching staff, but how much has Howie and other guys in the building been a reference? (Rob Kuestner)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, sure. Howie and I talk every day about, you name it, we talk about it. So huge resource to have Howie in many aspects. Obviously not only the best GM in the NFL of acquiring talent and being great at his job, but also in his experiences. So yeah, you reach out to everybody and we talk about this with the players a lot, right? We say, who better for our young tackles to learn from than [T] Lane Johnson or how did [C Cam] Jurgens learn the center position so well besides of the fact that he played great in college? Well, [Former Eagles C] Jason Kelce, well the same thing here with Howie, he’s been through it and being able to lean on him in situations like that is obviously a huge resource for myself.

Q. At safety and edge, what’s your tolerance for letting young players develop as opposed to bringing reinforcements from the outside? (Zach Berman)

Howie Roseman: Yeah, I think that’s a tribute to coach and his staff about wanting young players to develop understanding these talented players that can help us. We saw it last year with our team really. We’ve seen it since Nick’s been here that they want the best players to play. If they’re young players with incredible talent, that’s why you’re drafting guys high. It’s a great opportunity for our young players to understand that playtime’s available and that’s going to be sorted out through competition through every day.

There’s not a day that goes by that we don’t talk about this roster, including in the off season and talk about what we’re looking for and what we’re seeing and what we really need. And so I think our message to our players is go compete and let things lay out there and it doesn’t matter if they’re here one year or five years, obviously. I think on defense we only have three guys over 25 years old, but they’ve been playing football for a long time.

Q. How would you characterize the financial state of the team of this season? The flexibility to make midseason moves? Is it possible? (Brooks Kubena)

Howie Roseman: Yeah, I think that you got to look that again, just the same way we look at the resource allocation question. For us, it’s the picks that we have. We have a lot of picks next year, we’re expecting to have 13 picks in next year’s draft, and those can be used to improve the team this year. They can be used to improve the team next year. They could be used to improve the team in the third year.

I think from our perspective, whatever opportunity comes about that can improve this football team. I mean, if there’s an incremental difference on a player who’s the 90th guy from a guy who’s on the street, we’re going to make that change and we owe that to our fans, we owe that to our players, we owe that to [Chairman and Chief Executive Officer] Jeffrey [Lurie] to do whatever we can to keep improving the talent level on the team. The way that I look at it is that we have a lot of young players coming down the pipeline that we want to keep in Philadelphia, but we want to win and we want to win right now.

We want to win next year and we want to win going forward. That’s my job to try to balance it and I’ll do whatever I can to make sure that that happens.

Q. (Regarding roster building this time versus the last time the Eagles won a Super Bowl and what were the biggest differences between 2018 and 2025 roster building)…(Jeff McLane)

Howie Roseman: I think when I look back at that moment, some of the lessons, and there were a lot of lessons and we’ve talked about it over the course of the year, is as much as you love the players, the staff, we got to keep getting better. There are teams that are improving throughout the off season that we got to keep up with and we got to do whatever it takes to put our best team forward, our best foot forward.

Those are hard decisions. Those are hard conversations. It’s not fun, but at the end of the day, we have a responsibility and our responsibility is to continue to get better as a team. There’s no resting on laurels and sometimes those mean making some changes and we made some changes. I think when you look back at that 2018 team, there were a lot of lessons. We didn’t start incredibly hot, obviously we finished really well, had an opportunity in the second round of the playoffs. But when you look forward from that, not only what happened in 18, but what happened in 19, what happened in 20, and I think that we’re positioned and that’s all we are because we’ve got to make good decisions, we’re positioned to put ourselves to compete here, not only this year, but going forward.

Q. What do you look for in second and third year players? What’s your experience? (Bob Brookover)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, everybody’s different. Our job is just to continue to try to develop them and their job is to work their butts off to try to develop, so obviously a little bit more about them going through an entire season with them, what their strengths are, what their things that they need to work on are, and so you just try to continue to develop that. But every situation is a little bit different as far as rookies, veterans, second year players, third year players.

Q. You mention competition a lot, that’s obviously what training camp is all about. And I know you’re looking at everything as you come into it, but is there a specific position group or guys who you’re kind of very intrigued about how their off-season was and how they’re coming into camp? (Jason Dumas)

Nick Sirianni: Sure, obviously not going to get into position battles or anything like that. We talk about that daily, how, and I talk about that daily. We’ll talk about that as a staff daily in our staff meetings but looking forward to seeing how some of those play themselves out. But everything we don’t pencil in, Hey, this guy is there or this guy’s there.

Because we’re working to compete with pads on obviously today, no pads on as we get acclimated, but things will sort themselves out. I think that’s why we don’t give you a lot of information of like, ‘Hey, these are the guys’ things are going to sort themselves out. There’s a lot of practice time, there’s a lot of things to play out before we do that. But yeah, really looking forward to seeing these guys compete today.

Q. (Regarding their approach on training camp practices, the duration of training camp practices and managing the changing NFL schedule)…(Mike Sielski)

Howie Roseman: I’m very fortunate to have someone sitting next to me who’s thinking about that from the time the season ends, the confetti falls and he’s talking about what we’re doing next year and he’s thinking about ways to improve. He’s constantly evolving his thought process. He’s picking the heads of every expert we have, not only in this building but throughout this league and every league.

I have tremendous confidence in his ability to get our team ready to play. So I defer to him on those things and the conversations that we have where he’s telling me the why of it, is so in depth and so well thought out that it makes me sleep really well at night.

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, again, every situation’s a little bit different, but you’re looking to do the best thing for your football team. Now, in my experience, the best thing for the football team is to practice and get better at football.

You don’t get better at football by thinking about football. You get better at football by practicing, so you’re always thinking about health and this and that, but teams that aren’t in good shape, that’s where some injuries happen.

Obviously there’s some things that happen with bad luck as well. But our goal and our mission is to be in the best shape we possibly can be. You only get that by working here, but there’s a fine line. There’s a fine line of when to push, when to pull back, but how you get better at football is by practicing football and that’ll be our emphasis here this next month.