Howie Roseman did not fade into the background. He has not gone anywhere — except across the NovaCare Complex, but we’ll get to that — and he has most certainly not gone quietly. He is still out there, and he has many opinions. He recently delivered those opinions at a time that was, at the very least, curious.
Roseman appeared at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston last weekend. Demotion by promotion or no, his banishment to the business side of the Eagles’ operation didn’t prevent him from discussing various football-related topics. He had quite a bit to say — about the draft, trading up or staying put, free agency, and the value of retaining current players versus the risk of finding new ones. (You can listen to the whole thing here, for money, or you can visit our friends at Philly.com, who dutifully transcribed many of Roseman’s interesting remarks.)
With free agency looming, Roseman said teams have “a lot more success extending” players rather than finding new ones on the open market. He said, “We also always overestimate our ability to pick great players.” And, perhaps most fascinating of all, he underscored how organizations must make choices, “because we have a salary cap” and “you can’t pay everyone.”
A few days later, Chip Kelly traded LeSean McCoy to Buffalo, cut a bunch of players, freed up a ton of money and positioned the Eagles for a run in free agency. Kelly essentially did what Roseman warned against. How very interesting. Maybe the timing was coincidental, and maybe it was calculated, but it sure was interesting. Especially in retrospect.
Roseman ballparked draft success at “hitting on 60 percent of your first-round picks” and added that “the more chances you get, the more tickets to the lottery you get, the better you should be doing.” For everyone pushing a hot take in favor of moving up for Marcus Mariota, Roseman splashed cold water on your dreams (and possibly Kelly’s, too).
“The history of trading up for one player,” Roseman said, “when you look at those trades, isn’t good for the team trading up and putting a lot of resources into it.”
There are several ways to interpret the substance and timing of his remarks. 1.) Roseman thinks what he thinks and had no ulterior motive. It was all coincidental. 2.) Roseman was actually working in concert with Kelly. He said all that stuff about trading up just to make other teams think the Eagles aren’t willing to do it, with the hopes of lowering the market price on moving to snag Mariota. But that doesn’t quite explain his comments on free agency. 3.) Roseman thinks what he thinks, and he was happy to express those opinions, in public, knowing many of his remarks might undermine Kelly’s approach in the draft and free agency and paint the head coach/personnel poobah as someone who doesn’t fully appreciate or understand the NFL’s myriad complications.
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Roseman is a smart man. He knows that when he speaks, especially with the recent front office shakeup and the organization’s sudden silence that followed, people will pay attention and his words will be subject to interpretation. And then there’s the Inquirer’s accurate report that Roseman’s office was moved across the NovaCare Complex. Roseman’s old office — which he occupied when Andy Reid was the head coach — was on the football operations side of the building. It was two doors down from Kelly’s. Roseman’s new office is on business side of the complex, which is across the building. It is many, many doors down from Kelly’s. The symbolism there is obvious and powerful.
Not to mention: In 2012, Roseman talked about rewarding Eagles’ players and gave new deals to Todd Herremans, DeSean Jackson and McCoy. Then Kelly took over. Now they’re all gone.
Doesn’t seem like Roseman and Kelly are in a great place right now. The first and second scenarios feel unlikely. That leaves the third.
Roseman and Kelly wrestled for control of personnel decisions. Kelly won. Roseman lost. Roseman was banished to the business side of the organization in both day-to-day duties and location. (Somewhere, Milton weeps empathetic tears.) Considering they had to be professionally and physically separated, it’s not a huge leap to imagine Roseman speaking his version of the truth at Sloan — a few verbal jabs at the guy who already landed the biggest blows of the fight.
Jeffrey Lurie probably thought he could convince Roseman and Kelly to act professionally and co-exist when he made the decision to reorganize the front office power structure and keep both men in his employ. That always seemed like a difficult, if not-impossible, task. Confident, successful men with egos were involved in a struggle for control over a professional football franchise. That is not the sort of messy scrum that ends with hand holding and skipping off into the distance. It ends a much different way. It ends this way. Except it isn’t over. It continues unabated.