Critical mass: How the Eagles supersized the NFL
Shrewd drafting up front, on both lines, combined with good cap management. It won't stop here.
There’s a saying: “The closer you are to the line, the more important your position is.” Football people used to live by that. They strongly believed that centers, guards, tackles and other mammoths were the proximate cause of victory or defeat.
Then the Wright Brothers went to North Carolina sand dunes and got a machine to leave the earth (and lose a suitcase) for the first time. Glenn “Pop” Warner demonstrated that a football could stay airborne for a few seconds. The decades came and went, and suddenly the wide receivers, standing further from the center snap than anyone, were the essential players. That brought the cornerbacks and safeties into demand as well.
And that original adage became as relevant as “I before E except after C,” which was given no weight by most human beings and other species.
Two and a half weeks ago the Philadelphia Eagles demolished Kansas City to win their second Super Bowl in eight seasons. At the end of next week, their executives will join 31 other delegations at the Combine, where they will watch draft-eligible players run, jump, catch and throw. They will get them in separate rooms and give them 15-minute inquisitions. They will turn the players over to their doctors for physicals. Afterward, the clubs will have a granular picture of what each player’s chassis is like. The engine? That reveals itself when they start keeping score.
Howie Roseman is the Eagles’ general manager. If he believes everything that has been said about his prowess, Roseman will need a crane to get his head inside the doorways of Lucas Oil Stadium. He worked for Andy Reid, hired Doug Pederson and then hired Nick Sirianni, and all three have coached the Eagles in Super Bowls. These Eagles were in a different realm altogether, and the main reason is that Roseman listened to the original truth. They not only won the line of scrimmage, they took it back to Philly and hung clothes on it.
Beginning with the 2021 draft, the Eagles have found a starting player with each of their first two picks, each year. Five of those eight players can be found in the trenches:
2021: WR Devonta Smith, OG Landon Dickerson.
2022: DT Jordan Davis, C-G Cam Jurgens.
2023: DT Jalen Carter, Edge Nolan Smith.
2024: CB Quinyon Mitchell, CB Cooper DeJean.
Roseman’s third pick in the ‘21 draft was Milton Williams, who teamed with Carter, Davis, Smith and Josh Smith to torture the Chiefs’ offensive line, particularly on the perimeter. Roseman’s third pick in 2022 was linebacker Jakobe Dean, who didn’t play in the Super Bowl but emerged as a useful starter this season.
The Eagles didn’t have a first-round pick in 2018, and no studio expert slapped an instant A on their draft performance. They merely got tight end Dallas Goedert in the second round, cornerback Avonte Maddox in the fourth. Sweat in the fourth and tackle Jordan Mailata in the seventh.
Mailata was a rugby player from Australia who never had played football before, but he made the scouting rounds thanks to an NFL program that identifies global candidates. Only four years prior, he had fainted during rugby practice and needed heart surgery. Picking Mailata was enough of a gamble. Trading up 17 spots to take him was brazen and brilliant; today Mailata is 6-foot-8 and 366 pounds, and was ranked No. 1 among NFL tackles by Pro Football Focus.
The Eagles block out all irregularities in their evaluation system. In some ways they revel in the funky. Smith won the Heisman Trophy at Alabama. He also weighed 157 pounds. Could he get through an NFL season without breaking? Well, he has only missed five games in four years and has 27 touchdowns.
Dean was low-rated because he was 5-foot-11. Quarterback Jalen Hurts, a second-round pick in 2020 who is now the Eagles’ best-paid player and was the Super Bowl MVP, was too stiff and mechanical to get picked higher. If he’s so good, why did Tua Tagovailoa run him out of Alabama?
Sweat had a major knee operation while in high school and did not reach elite status while at Florida State. All of those players needed time and wise counsel, the way Jason Kelce, the nonstop TV pitchman who was the league’s top center in a previous life, helped tutor Jurgens.
Carter, unblockable while at Georgia, was supposedly a run-the-card-to-the-podium draft candidate. But at the 2023 combine, his role in a deadly car-racing incident came to light. He was charged with two misdemeanors when he drove 100 mph, contributing to a crash that killed a teammate and an athletic department employee. He also was driving with a suspended license. Carter sank on Draft Day, but the Eagles were the safety net, picking ninth in the first round. Dean, Davis and other Georgia players on the roster vouched for Carter. Now there is no better interior pass rusher in the league, and Carter only turns 24 in April.
There have been blemishes. In 2019 Justin Jefferson was on the board, a nuclear weapon glowing in the green room, but the Eagles went with TCU’s Jalen Reagor. Washington State tackle Andre Dillard was Philly’s first-round pick in 2019 and 22nd selection overall. He never blossomed, but Josh Jacobs and Deebo Samuel, still available, did.
But the Eagles are far better off today than they were in the aftermath of their Super Bowl win over New England in 2017. They were bumping up against the salary cap with Alshon Jeffrey and Tim Jernigan making over $14 million. Lane Johnson, the first-round pick at tackle in 2013 and still a prime-timer today, was at $15.3 million, and interior defender Fletcher Cox was at $22 million. Roseman squeezed through 2020 and the Eagles still made the playoffs, as they have in seven of the past eight seasons.
Today the Eagles are $19.5 million under the cap, or were, before the NFL bumped it up to $281.5 million per team. Carter, Davis and Smith are the Georgia-bred nucleus of an ascending defensive line, and their combined cap figure in 2024 was $14.6 million. Sweat was making $9.5 million and now becomes an unrestricted free agent, as does linebacker Zack Baun, who became a free agent last year after four obscure years in New Orleans and suddenly became an All-Pro in Philadelphia, with a diving interception in the Super Bowl.
Even Saquon Barkley, the one-man touchdown drive, gave the Eagles a record rushing season at a cap figure of just $7.4 million. Successful trades for cornerback Darius Slay, safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson and tackle Mekhi Becton have filled the gaps. Of the starting 22 in the Super Bowl, only safety Reed Blankenship, of Middle Tennessee State, was undrafted.
Sports with hard salary caps, like the NFL and NHL, put their general managers under the hot lights. Management is essential. Triage is imperative, no matter how difficult it is to explain publicly. Problems cannot be buried by gushers of money. And mistakes at the quarterback position can bring chaos, or stability, to any organization. The 49ers were able to sustain excellence largely because they didn’t have to pay quarterback Brock Purdy, who wowed the league as a rookie. Those days are coming to an end. The Browns gave $230 million in guaranteed money to DeShaun Watson, and now they’re looking for another quarterback and some sort of Steve McQueen-style escape from salary-cap Alcatraz.
Beyond everything else, Roseman’s tunnel vision does not prevent him from recognizing the obvious. The Eagles’ defense was dismal at the end of 2023, when they were shoved out of the playoffs by the Bucs in the wild-card round. So Roseman took Mitchell and DeJean off the top. Yes, the pass rush makes their job quicker and easier, but both of them were such resounding hits that they don’t need to pick a corner for the visible future.
Just as the Blackhawks, Kings and Penguins proved that excellence can be sustained under constraint in hockey, the Eagles and Chiefs have stayed ahead of the game by combining business sense with talent radar. There are different explanations for different situations. In Philadelphia’s case, the answer doesn’t fall far from the ball.