As the NFL draft approaches, Howie Roseman discusses the Eagles’ prospects, trade possibilities and more

In just over a week, general manager Howie Roseman and his staff will hunker down at the NovaCare Complex for the first night of the NFL draft, ready to select players and make moves that aim to shape the Eagles’ future for the better.

Roseman will have plenty of opportunities to do so. While the Super Bowl champion Eagles are slated to pick in the last slot of the first round — No. 32 overall — they are going into this year’s draft with a total of eight picks through the first five rounds.

Every year, Roseman and coach Nick Sirianni meet with the media to discuss the state of the team and general roster-building philosophies going into draft. Here are four takeaways from Tuesday’s news conference:

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Roseman has been in this position twice before, picking late in the first round on the heels of Super Bowl appearances. In 2018 after the franchise’s first Lombardi Trophy, Roseman went into the draft with the 32nd overall pick. In 2023, the Eagles had Nos. 10 (via the New Orleans Saints) and 30 overall (the Miami Dolphins had forfeited their first-round pick, bumping the Eagles up one spot).

Those drafts ended up being some of the best in Roseman’s tenure as general manager, in the first round and beyond. In 2018, Roseman traded out of No. 32 and eventually came away with a haul that included Dallas Goedert (No. 49 overall), Avonte Maddox (fourth round), Josh Sweat (fourth round), and Jordan Mailata (seventh round).

Five years later, Roseman fared well in the draft again, even beyond trading up for Jalen Carter from No. 10 overall to No. 9. He also selected Nolan Smith (No. 30 overall), Tyler Steen (third round), Sydney Brown (third round), Kelee Ringo (fourth round), Tanner McKee (sixth round), and Moro Ojomo (seventh round). While the jury is still out on Steen, Brown, and Ringo, each player will likely have opportunities to compete for starting roles in training camp this year.

For Roseman, picking in the later portion of the first round requires patience, a quality that he admitted isn’t his best.

“You have to allow things to come to you,” Roseman said. “The chances that you’re trading up into the top 10, top 15, top 20 are slim. That’s hard to do. So you have to really understand the strengths of the draft. You have to spend a lot of time being realistic about who you think you have an opportunity to get so you can spend a lot of time with them.”

Just like he did in 2018, Roseman is going into this year’s draft with the No. 32 overall pick. When asked if he thinks that he can get a true first-round talent at No. 32, Roseman explained that it all depends on how the board falls.

“The way we go into looking at the draft is we always take worst-case scenario and work back from that,” Roseman explained. “We’ve got to be really comfortable with whatever is our worst-case scenario, which will always entail getting a good player. There’s never 32 first-round grades on our board. We don’t have 32 first-round grades in this draft.

“So obviously, it depends on how things go. You go through a lot of hypotheticals. You try to put yourself in any possible position so that you’re ready to execute.”

There’s a degree of luck to the process. Last year, the Eagles were fortunate when Quinyon Mitchell fell to them at No. 22 overall, in part due to a run on quarterbacks early in the first round.

“Everyone’s looking at things differently,” Roseman said. “Everyone has a different vision for what they’re looking for for their team. Everyone has a different vision for the particular players that they’re looking at. And you just hope that it makes sense for your football team.”

This time last year, Roseman stated the obvious when asked about his stance on draft-night moves: “I like the trades.”

That affinity has been evident in recent years, whether he’s moving up in a round to select a player (Cooper DeJean in 2024, Carter in 2023, Jordan Davis in 2022, etc.) or flipping picks for veterans (A.J. Brown in 2022, D’Andre Swift in 2023). While Roseman expressed an understanding of the risk that comes with every trade, he also acknowledged that his aggressive approach isn’t changing any time soon.

“For me, I think that being aggressive has always been part of my DNA and I feel fortunate that I have people around me who support that,” Roseman said. “Coach [Sirianni], [Eagles owner] Jeffrey [Lurie]. It allows us to take chances and try to be aggressive.”

The Eagles have plenty of ammo to be aggressive on the trade market next week. Not only does Roseman possess eight picks in this year’s draft, he is also expected to have 12 picks in 2026, including three projected compensatory picks for the losses of Milton Williams, Sweat, and Mekhi Becton in free agency.

Still, with eight players on the roster making at least $15 million in 2025 and with young talent like Carter, Nolan Smith, and Cam Jurgens in line for extensions soon, the Eagles need contributions from young, inexpensive players to continue to compete for championships. The more picks that a team makes, Roseman explained, the better chance the team has of hitting on those players.

“We want to get as many young, talented players on this roster as we can to add competition,” Roseman said, “which is one of Coach’s core values and also because of the financial situation that we’re going to have going forward in our effort to try to win another championship for this city.”

Speaking of trades, could Dallas Goedert be on the move next week? The 30-year-old tight end has been dangled on the trade market this offseason, but Roseman offered no update on his status when he last spoke at the league meetings at the end of March.

While Goedert’s future in Philadelphia remains uncertain as he enters a contract year, Roseman said his situation doesn’t impact the Eagles’ urgency to draft a tight end in this year’s draft.

“The way we look at the draft is it’s a separate entity to anything else that’s going on,” Roseman said. “We’ve got to make good decisions in the draft based on who the players are that are available in the draft. We can’t make up any positions and make them better than they’re not. We have to really have a true process. So it really doesn’t affect us.”

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To avoid picking based on need rather than the best player available, Roseman bolstered the tight-end corps in free agency, signing Harrison Bryant and Kylen Granson to one-year deals. Those additions — and most of the Eagles’ free-agent signings this offseason — are dart throws, though, given their lack of production to this point.

The Eagles have enjoyed stellar tight end play for nearly two decades thanks to Brent Celek, Zach Ertz, and Goedert. Could the team’s TE1 of the future be a member of the 2025 draft class? The group, headlined by Penn State’s Tyler Warren, is only as deep as whoever is available when the Eagles are picking, according to Roseman.

“We’ve been in situations where we think it’s a really good class at a certain position, and then when we’re picking, it just hasn’t worked out, that the caliber of the players met the value of the pick,” Roseman said. “So I think that’s how we kind of judge the class, is wherever we’re picking, what’s the caliber of player at that point in time.”

While every team approaches its top-30 visits differently (some teams don’t use them at all and others use them as subterfuge), the Eagles have shown just how much they value the process through their recent draft history.

Last year, DeJean, Jalyx Hunt, Johnny Wilson, and Ainias Smith took top-30 visits before the Eagles selected them. The top-30 visit period is an “information-gathering process,” according to Roseman, much like the rest of the predraft phase.

“For us, it’s really just trying to fill in a lot of the blanks, and the more we get to know people, the more that we expose them to not only us, but people around us, the better we get a feel for them,” Roseman said. “We think they’re incredibly valuable for us.”

That information can still be useful even if the Eagles don’t end up selecting one of those players. This offseason in a trade with the Cleveland Browns, the Eagles acquired Dorian Thompson-Robinson, a quarterback who took a top-30 visit to Philadelphia in 2023.

The Eagles reportedly have welcomed at least 24 players on top-30 visits this cycle, including Georgia safety Malaki Starks and Boston College edge rusher Donovan Ezeiruaku.

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