If you tuned in to Jeff Lurie’s 42-minute news conference on Monday afternoon after he fired Doug Pederson and expected him to hold his longtime general manager accountable, you probably didn’t make it to Minute 42.
Because if there’s one thing Eagles fans seem to agree on these days, it’s that Howie Roseman hasn’t done a very good job in recent years to provide the Eagles with a winning roster.
And if there’s one thing Lurie made clear on Monday, it’s that he thinks Roseman is doing a bang up job.
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“I have real confidence that our football operations, led by Howie, can not only repeat the performance of 2016 until now,” Lurie said, “and once again, create a dominant football team that can really maximize every aspect of its potential. I think that's the transition period we're in.”
The thing is: It really sounds like Lurie believes it. We’ve talked about the blindspot that Lurie has for Roseman but he took that to another level on Monday afternoon.
After Lurie said he had confidence in the Eagles’ football operations staff, particularly Roseman, I had a chance to ask him why.
Why feel confident about football operations?
NFL
Why feel confident about Roseman?
His answer was as baffling as it was long. Here it is in its entirety:
“So I think that there's several reasons I have confidence in our football operations. First of all, it's the people that he surrounds himself with. We're only as good as the people we surround ourselves with. It's easy to talk about the quarterback and the head coach and the GM, but honestly, we're a product of those that surround us.
“I see the people that Howie has attracted to our organization. I think the last two major GM searches have all been raiding our organizations, for whether it's [Jets general manager] Joe Douglas or [Browns general manager] Andrew Berry. We have about five people in our organization that right now I could project that will be general managers in this league, and he continually replenishes, whether it's a John Dorsey or Jeremiah Washburn, or the list goes on. I don't want to leave anybody out. But we have a real strong nucleus with Andy Weidl, Ian Cunningham, Catherine Raîche, Brandon Brown. One of the jobs of the general manager is to attract really good people and executives around him because it's not meant for one person.
“There's been mistakes. There's mistakes, but what I have to look at is the process and I have to look at the performance over time but most importantly I have to look at the process. If we are not identifying the best players leading up to a selection in the draft, then that's a problem. If we are identifying the best players but they get taken two, three, four, five picks ahead of us, that's also part of the evaluation. That's part of understanding the process. Understanding the details.
“And so I always have to make the tough decision of: Are we getting it right? Where are we getting it wrong? Where are the decisions being made that may cause us to – once we didn't get the three players that we really wanted right there, they just got taken, what's caused that next selection that may not have been maximized?
But in terms of every level of the football operation, I am really confident of where we're at and I don't see any reason why we're not going to return to preeminence with more mid-term and long-term decision-making.”
That long-winded answer really boils down to two main points:
1. Howie surrounds himself with top-notch talent. The Eagles are now a GM factory.
2. The Eagles like the right players but those pesky teams ahead of them always draft them first. Talk about bad luck.
Both are hard sells for me and I’m guessing they’re hard sells for the fanbase. Because who the heck cares that the Eagles produced Douglas for the Jets and Berry for the Browns?
And who cares that the Eagles liked players they weren’t able to draft? The process means nothing if results don’t follow; and the results, especially in the draft, have been absent for years. The draft is about landing players where you pick. Heck, in the last two drafts, we’ve seen the opposite happen. The Eagles passed on D.K. Metcalf and Justin Jefferson only to watch them become Pro Bowl players.
It didn’t take long on Monday afternoon to see where Lurie’s news conference was going. Heck, in his first answer, he started to give hints and excuses for the Eagles’ recent failures in the front office.
It sounded awfully familiar.
Because here’s what Lurie said on Monday and what Roseman said last Tuesday:
Lurie: “Where I think we're at, and I'm just being kind of direct with all of you, and it's something that's hard to talk about during the season, but I think where we're at is we made a lot of decisions to try to accomplish bringing the first Lombardi Trophy to Philadelphia, and that started in 2016 but it continued into 2017.
“And certainly afterwards, if there were significant, I would say strategic mistakes, they were made in the name of trying to hold the band together, kind of bring back the band together. There was a lot of short-term decision-making and allocation of resources that gave us probably a slightly better chance to go back to the Super Bowl in 2018 and 2019.”
Roseman: “I’m not worried about my job. That's not anything that really concerns me. That's out of my hands. I'm worried [about] doing what's the best and right thing for this team to get back. Like I said, when we talked about it, I think that some of the things that we did were more short-term oriented.
“I think winning in '17, we wanted to do whatever it took and whatever resources it took to win, especially when we kind of saw the opportunity. Then '18, felt like maybe it was an opportunity to run it back with the players that we had, and maybe even in '19, just continue to keep it going.”
The fact that Lurie began parroting Roseman was awfully telling. These guys are seemingly inseparable and while Pederson clearly had dissenting opinions, Lurie and Roseman are in lockstep.
They both agreed with the approach to run back the championship team and both now agree that it’s time for a rebuild, even if Lurie talked in circles to avoid using that term on Monday.
Roseman has been the Eagles’ general manager since 2010 (minus 2015) and is about to help lead a search for another head coach. The next coach will be the fourth during Roseman’s tenure as GM and the third he will have helped hire.
Roseman has now outlasted Tom Heckert, Andy Reid, Joe Banner, Chip Kelly, Ed Manowitz and now Doug Pederson.
“I want to win more Lombardis for Philadelphia and our fans,” Lurie said. “We have got the greatest fans around. I will do anything possible, and if it means making any change necessary, I will.”
But will he ever hold Roseman accountable? I’ll believe it when I see it.
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