By the end of this article you will be convinced that Howie Roseman is the Eagles’ equivalent to Carole Baskin from Netflix’s Tiger King.
Building the Rescue
Howie joined the Eagles front office in 2010. He inherited some wealth from Andy Reid, Joe Banner and Tom Heckert, which included athletic players like DeSean Jackson, LeSean McCoy, Jeremy Maclin, Mike Vick, Jason Peters, and Todd Heremans. Very offensive heavy and a quick attack scheme.
The organization couldn’t obtain the ever elusive Lombardi trophy, they couldn’t become the King. They were criticized for being more about the money than the championships. Howie was here to change that perspective and make it about the money and the championships..
The team Howie inherited allowed him to ease into his role and covered up some of his poor judgments. But every year there was a reality show revealing the weaknesses and negative traits of Howie and the organization. The NFL Draft.
In 2010, he drafted a very promising Brandom Graham and Nate Allen but then a bunch of busts from SW Missouri St, Northwestern, Washington, Kentucky and Mississippi St. But he did get Riley Cooper and Kurt Coleman from some of the powerhouse schools of Florida and Ohio St. This was his first go at the draft and he stuck to the basics, natural selections early and took risks towards the end.
2011 he really revealed who he was and made a poor performance by beginning to focus on college programs that don’t produce purebred NFL talent:
Local DB from Temple.
DB from Utah St.
Firefighter turned Guard from Baylor.
Kelce and Dion Lewis were hidden gems.
The wrong Matthews brother from Oregon.
And a whole bunch of other no names from Connecticut and USC.
2012 progress was made through the draft and free agency to acquire talent that made fans forget about the previous season’s poor performance. The first three rounds produced Fletcher, Mychal Kendricks (still the wrong brother), Vinny Curry and Nick “The Savior” Foles. The remaining 5 picks were nothing special, but this draft was the bittersweet ending to the Andy Reid era in Philadelphia. New management was coming on to run the ranch now.
It was quickly going to turn into a full out zoo.
Rescue or Zoo
2013 led to huge changes, with the emergence of Chip Kelly the focus appeared to wane again from picking the powerhouse players from the purebred programs. The draft became a mental chess game. While the 2013 draft produced all-pros in Lane Johnson and Zach Ertz, those were the easy picks. From a fan's perspective we saw the chaos emerging when picks from USC, NC State, Utah and Oregon St. all produced nothing. There were Big Cats in Lane and Ertz distracting from the rest of cubs in the house of cards.
2014 produced players again from the timid programs of Louisville and Vanderbilt in the first 2 rounds. One of which resulted in a great role player in Jordan Matthews. The remaining part of this draft clearly showed Chip’s influence. 2 players from his own recruitment classes at Oregon, Josh Huff and Taylor Hart who started a total of 7 games in their NFL careers. Chip was in full control whether officially or not but Howie was still expected to put on a show to tell the fans they were trying to win championships.
2015 led to even bigger changes, Howie was removed from GM and was “promoted” to a cage in the basement. Only to come out to put on performances to show the world the organization was moving in the right direction. Chip Kelly became the man in charge making all the decisions. This is when Howie’s plan started, the plan to permanently remove Chip from the organization. Chip drafted another receiver from USC, Agholor, who had potential but seemed to be missing some aspect of raw talent for a 1st round pick. Eric Rowe was picked from Utah, but they couldn’t figure out how to use him. Jordan Hicks was an impact LB out of Texas, which may have saved this draft. But the rest of the draft produced nothing with selections from Kansas, Kansas St and BC.
Due to the lack of retaining draft picks each year, the average age of the team jumped from 2nd youngest in 2012 to 5th oldest in 2015. This was also after Chip traded away some of their raw talent for players that fit his “type” of cross-position talent. Small linebackers. Receivers that relied on being wide open in college. DBs who used their vertical abilities against average size receivers.
This also led to turmoil in the organization and all of the sudden Chip disappeared. Howie owned it all.
Rebranding
2016 was his chance to display he had learned and changed from the days of the past when Chip’s unethical and exotic ways took away from the focus of championships. It was Howie’s chance to become the Draft King.
Howie began moving around all the assets and the plan to start forgetting began.
His Public Relations campaign began, which started with one of his most famous quotes after trading up in the draft to get a franchise quarterback. “It’s like Vanilla or Chocolate. It’s like Pepperoni pizza or Sausage” referring to Jared Goff and Carson Wentz.
Thankfully the choice was made for him when the Rams selected Goff first. This was his best draft to date resulting in Wentz, Mills, Vaitai, and Seumalo. Now that he has all his assets where he wanted them to be, he started taking responsibility and focused back on rescuing the Lombardi trophy to bring back to Philadelphia.
By 2017, Howie’s team was rebranded and removed from the past management. Fans barely remembered the debacle of Chip even though it still hurt. He started building the brand to be purebred athletes again. Acquiring Alshon Jeffrey, Brandon Brooks, Patrick Robinson, and Timmy Jernigan in free agency. But again the draft quickly turned into a reality show.
Outside of the first pick from Tennessee, Derek Barnett, the rest of this draft was all questionable. They had 6 picks in the first 5 rounds.
And now the more reasonable Joe Douglas was involved so it should have been the best draft.
BUT, Sidney Jones, Mack Hollins and Donnel Pumphrey were all selected when more obvious picks were on the board:
Alvin Kamara, Kareem Hunt, Tarik Cohen, Marlon Mack, Aaron Jones, Jamaal Williams, James Conner, or Chris Carson. George Kittle, Jayon Brown, Desmond King, JuJu, Cooper Kupp, Chidobe Awuize.
Any 1 of those players realistically could be making a bigger impact than Mack Hollins, Sidney and Donnel combined.
Salvation?
Luckily, for Howie, the Eagles led by his QB Wentz pulled off one of the best regular seasons in a decade for the Eagles. His other QB Foles, Defensive Linemen: Brandon Graham, Fletcher Cox, Vinny Curry, Offensive Linemen: Lane, Kelce, and Brooks, Tight End: Zach Ertz finished it off with the most epic Super Bowl story of the modern era. The campaign the team made to get the Lombardi safely in the hands of the organization made the awful drafts a mere speck on the resume of Howie. By the time the streamers and banners were flying on Broad St. he wanted fans to think he was finally the Draft King. But from a fan’s perspective, the organization had to prove they could sustain the success first.
2018 and 2019 mattered less in theory because the high from the championship lingered. And right on queue the Draft terrorized him again, the threat was still there. 2018 he worked with what he had, and acquired a role playing DB (Maddox) and an emerging TE (Goedert). He also acquired some players to develop, but he took a chance on them, again from smaller programs or no programs at all (Mailata). 2019, he was able to acquire a future “hopefully” all-pro Guard in Andre Dillard and the immediately impactful Miles Sanders. But again towards the middle and end of the draft the demons returned to threaten his existence. The mental hurdle was tripped over.. Instead of drafting stud receivers still on the board: McLaurin from Ohio St, raw pure talent DK Metcalf from Ole Miss and always reliable Darius Slayton from Auburn. Instead, JJAW from another Pac12 team was selected. While the jury is still out on him it only got worse with the remaining picks.
And here Howie is again in 2020 with another chance to take down the enemy and really become the Draft King.
Baskin or King
Over his time in Philadelphia he has fought the constant attacks from fans about him and Lurie being greedy for money rather than the genuine mission of winning the Lombardi. He has continually been embarrassed on the stage of the draft, revealing his worst traits. At the beginning he had a simple strategy to take over what Heckert started and focus on bringing the trophy home to the promiseland.
He slowly moved to the concept of drafting value instead of certainty. Like Carole Baskin he switched from a naturalist to doing exactly what the enemy did. Chip drafted players who had to develop or would become small role players in the early rounds. Carole started making money off of crossbred animals and rescuing them, using cheap caretakers to save a couple bucks. Howie has become Carole by taking on Chip’s strategy of only drafting for value.
But this was all covered up by the fact that he can claim his guys won the first Super Bowl in Eagles History. This narrative softens the negatives because like Carole’s zoo is a “rescue”, Howie’s poor picks led to a championship. He hopes the fans forget his past based on the success and stop questioning his methods. But don’t let that stop you. From a fan’s perspective the Super Bowl should not have lessened the expectations of Howie, it should have only heightened them.
Howie is always trying to get the “smarter than you” pick with mediocre talent from the lesser conferences of Pac12 and AAC. He needs to get back to the basics. In 2020, he needs to finally prove to all that he’s done playing this game and finally become the Draft King or he will continue to follow in Carole’s footsteps. And no one wants Carole running their organization...
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