The Philadelphia Eagles have strengthened themselves again with safety Kevin Byard via trade shortly before the NFL trade deadline. The move once again underlines who the real star of this organization is.
He did it again! Longtime Eagles official and current Executive Vice President & General Manager Howie Roseman engineered another great trade on Monday by bringing two-time All-Pro safety Kevin Byard from the Tennessee Titans to Philly. For a fifth and sixth round pick and complementary player Terrell Edmunds.
Once again Roseman can be called a genius because once again he managed to improve the Eagles with a move that didn’t really hurt. Byard is one of the best safeties in the league. A ballhawk and someone who is always playing. And he comes for a whopping $2.44 million for the rest of the season. After that, the Eagles even have the chance to release him without dead money.
Of course, it is likely that he will at least fulfill his contract until the end of 2024, which would bring him a total of just over $14 million next year. As things currently stand, he would only be the sixth-highest paid player in his position in terms of total cash next year.
Since the price in the form of draft picks is also manageable, we are talking about the next stroke of genius from the GM, who has already built two Super Bowl teams since 2017. In 2017 it was enough to win the title in the end, last February one half was missing from the second Lombardi for Philly. And it’s fair to say that Roseman is the quintessential constant of this organization. He is the architect of this franchise.
Eagles: Roseman has been there for 20 years
Roseman (48), who joined the Eagles in 2000 as an intern after graduating from law school and then worked his way up to his current position over two decades, has developed a reputation as an official that is at least a step above almost all other GMs is ahead.
His most recent strokes of genius were the cheap free agent deal for edge rusher Haason Reddick in the summer of 2022 or the spectacular trade for wide receiver AJ Brown during the 2022 NFL Draft, when he only had to give up a first-round pick for the superstar receiver because he The Titans simply didn’t want to pay – a move that still haunts Tennessee to this day.
Roseman also managed to get cornerback Darius Slay from Detroit in 2020 for a third and fifth round pick. A bargain considering what other cornerbacks cost via trade in the aftermath. The team’s other top corner, James Bradbery, came from the division rival New York Giants after being released for cap reasons, and Roseman also arranged a trade for Byard’s predecessor CJ Gardner-Johnson for a few late draft picks with the Saints.
Additional trades over the years landed him half of the Georgia defense that won back-to-back college football national championships. The crowning achievement for the time being was the uptrade in the 2023 draft from position 10 to 9 to get D-line monster Jalen Carter, who others had spurned due to his difficult character.
This was possible because the Eagles took advantage of the Saints’ desperation in 2022 and made a trade with them that, among other things, gave them the original tenth pick in 2023. In addition, the pick that was sold for Brown was also a 2022 pick from the Saints.
So Roseman’s superior trades over the past few years will pay off until at least 2023. And so his biggest and, if you like, double mistake of his term in office can be easily coped with. We are of course talking about quarterback Carson Wentz, for whom the Eagles dug deep into their pockets in the 2016 draft. In total, they sent five picks, including two first-round picks in 2016 and 2017, to Cleveland to draft Wentz second.
Eagles: The Wentz Misunderstanding
After a near-MVP season in 2017, however, his career was completely derailed after several serious injuries, so that the Eagles not only won the Super Bowl without him in 2017, but even traded him away in 2021 and replaced him with Jalen Hurts. And that after Wentz had previously been given a highly paid albatross contract.
After all: To the surprise of everyone, Roseman drafted Hurts in round 2 in 2020 with the note that you can never have enough quarterbacks. What’s more: He even managed to convince the Indianapolis Colts – again a desperate team after the sudden resignation of Andrew Luck and in the midst of an absurd series of ultimately seven years in a row with a new quarterback each time – to not only give him Wentz and his Not only to accept the contract, but also to pay for a first and third round pick.
Former Green Bay Packers finance VP and current college professor and business insider Andrew Brandt summed it up aptly in a post on X: “I’ll never understand why GMs answer their phones when Howie Roseman calls. It never seems to be a fair fight.”
Roseman is there whenever some questionably run NFL team is about to commit an act of self-sabotage and is always happy to lend a helping hand, if you will. Of course, he was also involved in the chaos trip that the Miami Dolphins pulled off in the 2021 draft.
They had spectacularly traded their third overall pick to San Francisco (Trey Lance) and thus jumped to position 12. Then, during the first round, they panicked and traded back to the top 10, specifically No. 6, to the Eagles for wide receiver Jaylen Waddle. A player who certainly paid off, but who could probably have been had cheaper.
Eagles: Roseman’s maneuvers pay off
The Eagles then traded up two spots and brought in Heisman winner DeVonta Smith. Also a worthwhile trade.
Be it trades for established players or draft picks, be it maneuvering the draft or evaluating players in general – Roseman seems to be superior to other officials in this league in many respects.
It should also be mentioned that his cap management, which was his first major task with the Eagles during the Andy Reid era, is excellent. Even this year’s impressive roster doesn’t have a player taking up more cap space than Lane Johnson’s $14.7 million. Only four players in total are listed with more than ten million. A big reason why spontaneous additions like Byard are easily possible.
Roseman has put together a strong organization that, even with mistakes, will not run into problems for years to come, but is on very solid ground and can even reach for the stars. Not bad for a former intern.
Marcus Blumberg