The Eagles didn’t walk quietly into the free-agency pool.
They cannonballed.
This week, the team signed six new players, traded three starters, and moved up into the top 10 in this year’s draft.
But none of that was as important as what the Eagles did leading up to this week when they re-signed several of their own key players to long-term deals.
“I think that the most important thing we did this offseason was sign our own guys,” vice president of football operations Howie Roseman said.
“We start out with that message and be able to tell the people that we’ve drafted, that have been here, that they’re our priority, they’re first before we go into free agency. That’s the message that we want to send as an organization.”
Recent free-agent signing binges have backfired for the Eagles in big ways. Remember the Dream Team in 2011? Or whatever it was Chip Kelly did to the roster last offseason?
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This year, in the wake of Kelly’s ouster, the Eagles aimed to get back to what worked for the organization for a decade under Joe Banner, Andy Reid and Roseman. They signed their own guys like Zach Ertz, Lane Johnson and Vinny Curry to big contract extensions, rewarding them for past play and projecting an increase of production in the future.
That was the goal this offseason, not splashing in free agency.
In fact, a couple weeks ago at the combine, Roseman spoke about learning from the team’s past mistakes in free agency (see story). He spoke about the importance of building through the draft and not splurging just to splurge in free agency.
Then he overhauled the roster this week. Again.
Splash.
Even though, that wasn’t necessarily the plan.
“I don’t think that we went into this offseason thinking we were going to make dramatic changes, but opportunities came that were better for our team, not only in the short-term but also in the long-term,” he said. “And when those opportunities came, we also felt like there were some guys at some key positions to fill that we could add.”