February 28, 2024
Philadelphia Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni and general manager Howie Roseman spoke for around 15 minutes each at the NFL Combine on Tuesday. Here are my 10 takeaways.
"Haason obviously is an unbelievable player for the Philadelphia Eagles," Roseman said. "Local kid, great success story – Camden, Temple, Philly. Love having Haason. I think that anything you're trying to do, you're trying to blend obviously what you're trying to do this year and how you're going to look in the future. I think that's the hardest job.
"Certainly, I don't want to get into any specifics with any conversations with players, but I have tremendous respect for the player and the person."
#JimmyTranslation: Reddick is under contract for one more season, and the reality is that he is underpaid relative to other similarly performing edge rushers.
The Eagles allowed Reddick and his representation to seek a trade, which will also allow them to explore what other teams are willing to pay him. They will let the market dictate what Reddick is worth, both in terms of trade compensation and pay, and then go from there. In other words, they'll let the market come to them.
"Obviously, those guys are unbelievable players, unbelievable people, and they deserve the right to decide what's best for them," Roseman said. "We'll wait and give them whatever time and space they need to make the right decisions.
"I think the important thing from our perspective is you never want to see them wearing different colors. I think for us, no matter when that is, if they want the opportunity to come back, we'd want to have the opportunity to bring them back."
#JimmyTranslation: It's perhaps worth noting that Kelce made his decision to return for another season at the 2023 Combine. Certainly, the Eagles would like to have decisions from Kelce and Cox before the start of free agency, but in both cases they have succession plans already in place so it's not imperative.
I imagine we'll hear from both Kelce and Cox soon.
"He's under contract, part of our plans," Roseman said.
#JimmyTranslation: In my experience, the phrase "He's under contract" means that he soon won't be.
"There's not a book that is written on ‘this is how you lead,’" Sirianni said. "People lead in different ways. One thing I learned early about in leadership is that you have to be yourself, because if you lead and you're trying to be somebody you're not when you lead, that gets seen through. That's the same scenario I was put in when I became the head coach or an offensive coordinator or whatever it was. Everybody has to lead their way, and Jalen has special qualities that people will follow, and people will want to follow. And he's got to do what he needs to do to lead in that way. Some people's leadership style is loud and aggressive; some people's leadership style is by example; and some it's a mixture of both.
"So, Jalen needs to lead how he needs to lead, right? And A.J. Brown needs to lead how he needs to lead. Whoever it is. Darius Slay's got to lead how he needs to lead. Because that's leadership, right, is being who you are and leading by example. At the end of the day, if you're leading by example, that's a great style of leadership. So, Jalen needs to lead how he needs to lead, and I think he's done a great job of doing so. And he'll get, just like he has done in other things, he'll get better at that part of his game, and he'll get better, just because I know he'll continue to work on getting better no matter what part of the game he needs to work at."
#JimmyTranslation: To begin, I'm pretty sure Barnes and Noble has an entire section on books about leadership, lol.
Otherwise, while I agree with the notion that you shouldn't try to be someone you're not when you're in a leadership role, being able to connect with a variety of different personalities is part of the job of an NFL quarterback in 2024.
"I think that, again, you want to improve every area, every layer of your team," Roseman said. "Certainly, I think when we look back at last offseason, we made a conscious decision to put a little more resources onto the offensive side, and knew that we'd lose some good players on defense. I think looking back we certainly missed some of those guys, and that starts with me and making those decisions.
"I don't think there's an area that we wouldn't be open to addressing. Now, if you look at our defense and you're just kind of honest with it, we have a lot of young players at defensive tackle. Is that as big a priority as other areas, just being honest? Probably not. But that's also an important position, so we're also not going to be in a position where we turn down a guy because the resources are already there because we believe in the D-line so much."
#JimmyTranslation: I think it's pretty obvious which defensive positions are very flawed, and they'll address those.
"Obviously, tremendous respect for Vic, known him for a long time, and he's had tremendous success," Roseman said. "I think, when we talk about how we build a team overall, obviously that's something that's important to us, but by the same token, knowing what's important to the coordinator and the system so that it can be successful is important as well."
#JimmyTranslation: It's pretty clear that Fangio put together his defensive staff, considering that it is made up of a lot of guys who previously worked with him. The front office seems to trust his judgment, and I imagine they will welcome his opinions on players who previously played for him, much like they did with Jim Schwartz.
"I think you've still got to be cognizant of how you want to build a team," Roseman said. "You've still got to be aware of guys coming up for contracts that you want to keep that you don't anticipate losing. And I think it also gives you some flexibility to not force things, to have the ability to walk away from a deal and understand that it may come about at another time.
"It's like, if you win $5, it's still your $5. You don't want to just throw that $5 out and pretend like it's not yours. This is our salary cap money. We've got to make sure we're still making good decisions with it because, at the end of the day, as we go forward, we do have a lot of guys making a lot of money."
#JimmyTranslation: I'm told that the cap rose more than teams around the league were anticipating. That's good news for every GM around the league, but it's more beneficial to a team like the Eagles that is tighter against the cap than, saaayyyy, teams that already had like $70 million in cap space.
Roseman didn't say it, but I'm sure he's thrilled to have a more room to operate.
"DeVonta is an incredible person, incredible player; obviously homegrown, young guy," Roseman said. "Without getting into specifics, those are guys you don't really want to leave."
#JimmyTranslation: There's no rush, in my opinion. We covered this during our "Stay or Go" series, but a contract extension for Landon Dickerson is arguably more pressing.
Dickerson and Smith are both eligible for contract extensions after completing their third seasons in the NFL. If the Eagles cannot work something out with Smith, they can exercise his fifth year option for the 2025 season because he was a first-round pick. There's no fear of him leaving anytime soon.
They will have no such advantage with Dickerson, who was a second-round pick. It's also worth nothing that Dickerson will not be a good candidate for the franchise tag next offseason, should the Eagles need it, since franchise tags do not differentiate between guards and tackles. A franchise tag would be elite offensive tackle money, which the Eagles will not want to pay to any guard. As such, the Eagles should have more urgency to get something done long-term with Dickerson this offseason than Smith.
Roseman advocated for allowing young players to play, while Sirianni did not appear to be on that same page. We'll have more on that in a separate article soon.
"We went through, early here in 2021 we went through a really tough stretch, right, and we doubled down on the things we knew to be true, our culture, our core values," Sirianni said.
"And then we went through a tough stretch here too. Even though we said to ourselves, hey, we're doubling down on this, in 2021 it worked. In 2023 it didn't work.
"I think it's, again, being in this constant growth mindset of things that just always trying to get better at every style of football that you're trying to do. I do think, though, with those core values, you always double down on those because to me it wasn't the core values, we didn't just make them up and say connect, compete, accountability, football IQ, and fundamentals are what's important. That was years and years of coaching and playing that we thought to ourselves and I thought to myself these are the common denominators of good football teams. That's not changing off of a bad spurt, right?
"So, it is a true double down on those from day one. Doubling down on the connection, doubling down on the accountability. I really look at those two, the connect and the accountability -- even though I say connect, compete, those two C's kind of go together, so they stay together. But connect and accountability are the two, I would say, cornerstones of our program that those are the ones that, when I really take away -- hey, these are important, that we play with good football IQ, that we play with good fundamentals, and that we compete our ass off, those are important, but everything starts with the accountability and the connecting.
"So, it's almost a double down and triple down on those core values, and I look forward to, when the players get back, to do that."
#JimmyTranslation: Oof.
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