Eagles personnel executive Howie Roseman has been behind some of the most eye-opening moves in football over the past decade. Last week's trade, which netted the Eagles former Bills second-round pick Ronald Darby but also saw Sammy Watkins shipped to Los Angeles and Jordan Matthews sent to Buffalo, had to be one of the craziest.
On *Good Morning Football *on Wednesday, Roseman said it all started when the Eagles reported to training camp.
"Personnel conversations] start the minute you report to camp. We had these conversations with Buffalo throughout training camp and as we went into the first preseason game and we found a match. Hard trade to make. [Jordan Matthews, extremely productive, historically productive as a Philadelphia Eagle wide receiver, and then you're giving up a third-round pick, too," Roseman said. "You go back to our scouting staff ... they do a great job in the draft, so you're sitting there and going, you've got two possible starting-caliber players. What are you getting back? Is it worthwhile for what you're getting back?
"When we looked at our team, how the wide receivers were doing in camp, the young wide receivers, maybe it allows us to keep another young wide receiver that we couldn't before. We just felt like this was the best for the Philadelphia Eagles at the time."
Roseman elicits some pretty extreme opinions one way or the other from the football analyst world at large, but there's no doubt he's anything but complacent. Roseman, like his predecessors in the Andy Reid/Philadelphia think tank, has always been willing to make the move. In this case, it was a move to bolster confidence in Chip Kelly-era draft pick Nelson Agholor, which not only shows confidence in coach Doug Pederson, but a willingness to accept a player from an era that he aggressively tried to dismantle upon returning to power in Philadelphia. As he mentioned on air Wednesday, Roseman was told by his personnel department that they had a wide receiver surplus and started working from there.
When moves like this pan out, almost every coach wishes they had a GM with Roseman's aggression. At the least, Pederson is happy to have someone watching out for him.
