The Eagles talked about a youth movement this time last year too.
Shortly after the Eagles’ loss to the Seahawks, general manager Howie Roseman stood in the auditorium in the NovaCare Complex and admitted that the Eagles took their swings from 2017 through 2019. They had a Super Bowl roster and they tried to run it back.
It was hard to blame them.
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SIGN UP HERE But after winning the Super Bowl at the end of the 2017 season, we were already seeing the decline. The Eagles won just one playoff game in 2018, they lost in the first round in 2019. And after a few years of trying to recreate Super Bowl glory, the guy in charge of the team talked about getting younger.
“Going forward, we need to infuse youth in this team,” Roseman said in January of 2020. “We think we’re going to have 10 draft picks in the draft. We’re excited about that.”
The Eagles did end up drafting 10 players but before the draft a global pandemic hit and the Eagles found it all too convenient to veer from that plan.
There were no OTAs, no spring practices of any kind. And the Eagles looked at the stability of their coaching staff in relation to the other teams in the NFC East and decided to take one more swing at this thing with veteran players. Swing and a miss. They ended up with a 4-11-1 record.
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For what it’s worth, Roseman took ownership for that on Monday.
“As much as there's a little voice inside of your head that said, you know, now is probably the right time to change it,” Roseman said, “I think that's my responsibility that I didn't really listen to that as much as possible and now we're in the situation we are in now where change is necessary and change is inevitable to this roster and the things that we need to do to get back being the kind of team that we know we can be.
“We have this offseason plan, and I think it was a good plan, and I think we pivoted a little bit because of the pandemic, not that that's an excuse because it's not. But I think we pivoted a little bit and we kind of knew in our gut last year sitting here that it was the right thing to do to turn over the team and get more picks and get more young players. I don't think we went full-fledged in that, and that's my responsibility.”
If you take little solace in that hand-raise from Roseman, I don’t blame you. Because Roseman said the right things last year and then the Eagles did the wrong things. The Eagles drafted players and still brought back and played aging veterans.
They drafted three receivers and still played Alshon and DeSean because they were here.
They drafted Davion Taylor and Shaun Bradley and they barely saw the field.
They drafted K’Von Wallace and buried him on the depth chart.
They drafted Casey Toohill and lost him because they brought back and played Vinny Curry.
They kept Jordan Mailata on the bench for far too long behind Jason Peters because, after all, they brought Peters back and paid him handsomely.
None of that is to say the Eagles drafted the right players. None of that is to say that the Eagles were going to have a better season if they played those young guys instead of the older veterans in front of them. But the results ended up being a 4-11-1 season, so how much worse could it really have been?
The Eagles thought with a short-term mentality in 2020 and they failed not only in that season but are also left in a terrible place going forward. The quarterback situation is in disarray, they have a clear lack of young talent on the roster and they’re facing a salary cap nightmare in 2021.
So it’s even more clear now than it was last year: The Eagles need to reset their roster.
No more excuses.
No more exceptions.
Whether they want to call it this or not, the Eagles are now in a rebuilding phase. The good news is that rebuilds don’t take as long in the NFL as they take in some other sports. The bad news is that the Eagles have a general manager with a spotty record when it comes to drafting players and drafting good players is the only way out of this mess.
At least they ended up with the No. 6 pick and should have around nine or 10 draft picks in total.
“That's something we have to hit on, the 6th pick in the draft, in a huge, huge way,” Roseman said. “And I think that we have the right people to do that."
We’ll see.
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