PHOENIX — The No. 1 rule of the lottery is that you have to play to win.
The Eagles played the free agency lottery this offseason. We’ll start to find out in September if they’re winners.
After re-signing and extending several of their core veterans this offseason, the Eagles have had a type as they looked outside the building. They’ve signed a bunch of low-risk, high-reward players — or “lottery tickets” as GM Howie Roseman said on Monday.
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“I think that for us when you’re looking at these one-year guys, we want some high-upside guys,” Roseman said at the NFL owners meetings from the Arizona Biltmore on Monday afternoon. “We want some guys that have traits in their body. Guys that we had a like for at some point in time. So when you’re talking about those guys, they’re young guys who have upside.
“I think they balanced a little bit the re-signings. Probably went in a different direction than we had anticipated based on the market and so it balances a little bit the youth of our team. And at the same time, they’re guys that we have always been intrigued with from a skill perceptive.”
There are clearly five players who are in this category this offseason with one-year deals:
S Terrell Edmunds (Age: 26): $2 million with $600,000 guaranteed
NFL
S Justin Evans (Age: 27): $1.59 million with $600,000 guaranteed
RB Rashaad Penny (Age: 27): $1.35 million with $600,000 guaranteed
CB Greedy Williams (Age: 25): $1.35 million with $600,000 guaranteed
LB Nicholas Morrow (Age: 27): $1.55 million with $0 guaranteed
It would be foolish for the Eagles to think that all five of those players are going to come to Philly and suddenly live up to their potential. And it would would require some hubris to think that all the players with extensive injury histories are going to join the Eagles and suddenly stay healthy.
The Eagles aren’t counting on all five of these guys working out. They won’t even be heartbroken if some of these guys get to training camp and fail to make the roster.
But if just one or two of them really work out? It was all worth it.
Of those five players listed above, four of them were high draft picks. Penny and Edmunds were first-rounders in 2018, Evans was a second-rounder in 2017 and Williams was a second-rounder in 2019. Morrow is the outlier who went undrafted in 2017. But the point stands that these are talented players who haven’t become stars in the NFL for various reasons.
“I think we like this kind of high-upside guy, lottery tickets and understanding that they have to prove it,” Roseman said. “They have a chip on their shoulder. They have talent and it hasn’t worked out perfectly for where they are. If you can hit on some of those guys then I think it’s mutually beneficial.”
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