If you were wondering what Howie Roseman did all last year during his exile from front-office power, he laid it out plainly Wednesday when announcing the trade with the Browns that is expected to bring rookie Carson Wentz into an already crowded field of Eagles quarterbacks.
Roseman studied the NFL.
He went back over the last 15 years, almost to the dawning of the Andy Reid era in Philadelphia, and he looked at what really matters, what really moves the gears of the league. The answer he found wasn't surprising.
"The reality is I had a lot of time to do that," Roseman said of his research. "And we as an organization had time to go back and study. What are the keys to winning? What are the keys to being championship caliber over a long period of time? I don't think I'm saying anything everyone doesn't believe. It's quarterbacks."
Well, all right then. Quarterbacks are important in the game of football. We can all get behind that one. The question is whether this particular quarterback -- the 6-foot-5 Wentz from North Dakota State, whose stock has enjoyed a steep and unexpected bull market in the last three months -- is worth the price the Eagles paid to move from the eighth pick in the draft to the second pick. Take away the swaps and the Eagles gave up additional picks in the first, second and third rounds.
Roseman made it sound difficult to ever really lose by having too many quarterbacks, though, and whether that is a point of view shared by Sam Bradford is a good question. Regardless, the Eagles will have a lot of quarterbacks, and be on the hook for approximately $22.5 million in salary-cap space for the position. That will be the case even if the Rams throw a change-up and draft Wentz with the top overall pick, leaving the Eagles with Cal's Jared Goff, but Roseman gave a wink and a nod to indicate his intelligence was solid in that area, too.
"The compelling thing for us when we went out and did the research, you look at the landscape and ... the possibility that a lot more teams were needing quarterbacks and if you go forward and need a quarterback three years from now, even if you're picking in the top five, the teams that are at one or two wouldn't trade out. So that was a big risk going forward," Roseman said. "We look at it as investing in the quarterback position. When we were really successful, we invested in quarterbacks and turned around some of them in trades that got us assets."
In other words, if we could get a second-round pick for A.J. Feeley, imagine what Bradford could bring after a successful season, or Wentz after some careful grooming.
Under Andy Reid, the Eagles drafted six quarterbacks, starting with Donovan McNabb in this same second-overall slot in the 1999 draft. Including Feeley, three of them brought something back on the way out the door. Kevin Kolb's trade to Arizona eventually returned three players (Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, Vinny Curry and Brandon Boykin), as did McNabb's trade to Washington after 11 years in the league (Nate Allen, Casey Matthews and Ben Jones). Andrew Hall and Mike Kafka just sort of drifted away, and, well, the whole Nick Foles-for-Bradford thing is still an open question. It is sort of ironic that both of their current teams scurried up in the draft to potentially replace them.
"We researched what the quarterback classes look like going forward, next year, two years out. That's a daunting proposition. A lot of things can change and what we see now is probably not what you're going to see two years from now," Roseman said. "We looked at history and in the last 15 years, we only picked in the top 10 once and there was no quarterback that year. If you're going to commit to investing in quarterbacks, and we have people here who can teach quarterbacks as well as anybody in the NFL, sometimes you have to put your money where your mouth is."
The Eagles did that Wednesday. They passed on the chance to perhaps draft running back Ezekiel Elliott from Ohio State, or to grab a solid offensive tackle to protect Bradford. They forfeited a third-round pick this season, and won't have a selection between No. 2 and No. 79, and they gave up their first-round pick next season and a second-rounder in 2018.
It is a confident organization that bets its future picks won't be all that high, and there's nothing wrong with being confident. There's nothing wrong with studying the landscape of the league and deciding that quarterbacks are a commodity worth hoarding. The only danger is if Wentz isn't that good, or that Bradford tears up his knee again, or both.
Assets can turn into liabilities quickly, but give the Eagles credit for boldness, if nothing else. Roseman said they all know there is risk involved, but the decision was made after careful thought, and after a long time alone in the office last year with nothing to do but research.
Sports on 04/21/2016