Howie Roseman shares an important lesson from Ruben Amaro Jr. and reveals what he learned while on ‘sabbatical’

Without the triumph of the 1986 New York Mets, would the Eagles have achieved all of their recent success? This strange question might have a simple answer after listening to Eagles general manager Howie Roseman’s recent appearance on The Phillies Show podcast, hosted by former Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. and former Inquirer writers to land and Todd Zolecki.

“I’m probably sacrilegious for saying this, but one of the teams that really rekindled my desire [to work as an executive in sports], or really that I looked to, was the ’86 Mets,” said Roseman, who reminisced about “growing up in and around New York and watching that team, and the personality of that team and how that team was put together with veterans who were inspired to win and young players who had come through the system and were winning.”

But before deciding that was what he wanted to do for a living, Roseman apparently was networking for his dream job. While flying to Florida to visit his grandparents, a 7-year-old Roseman was seated directly next to Jack Elway, who then was the football coach at San Jose State. After talking with Elway during the entire flight, the coach gave his business card to Roseman’s mother and told her to have Howie call him once he graduated high school.

“It was unbelievable because I had no connection with the NFL, and even at that age … I was hooked,” Roseman said. “I was reading a draft magazine, and to have this guy who was football royalty to actually believe in me … you know everyone needs belief; everyone needs people who believe in them.”

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After graduation, Roseman called Elway, of course. But the path to becoming an NFL executive wasn’t easy.

Roseman wanted to play football but quickly realized he wasn’t built for the game. “My first scouting report was of myself,” he said jokingly. So he sent letters to every NFL team, hoping to land a job off the field. When teams responded with rejection letters, Roseman sent back thank-you notes.

“Dating was easy for me. I didn’t care — I was getting rejected all the time — if a girl said no, it was like, ‘No problem,’” Roseman said. “I’ve gotten so used to the word ‘no’ that it’s really helped me so much in life. … I tell [my kids] all the time, ‘Once you get immune to hearing no and being rejected, it’s powerful.’”

After he built up his personal collection of rejection letters, the Eagles gave Roseman a chance. They brought in the Brooklyn native as a front office intern in 2000. By 2010, he’d worked his way up to general manager. But that didn’t mean the “nos” were over.

In 2014, Roseman lost his general manager title and was demoted to executive vice president of football operations, while new coach Chip Kelly took charge of the front office, a time Roseman referred to as a “sabbatical year that was imposed on me.”

“You get these jobs, you always aspire for these jobs, and then you get in the seat and you really don’t know what it takes,” said Roseman, who added that “there’s very little patience for the mistakes that you’re going to inevitably make.”

Roseman took his demotion in stride and said he spent that year speaking with past and present general managers, including Amaro, as well as business leaders outside sports. His main takeaway? There are always going to be ups and downs, and “nothing is a straight line.” He also realized that those trials are necessary and came away inspired to give it another shot, whether that was in Philly or elsewhere.

When Kelly was let go before the end of the 2015 season, Roseman regained many of his original responsibilities — though he didn’t officially receive the general manager title again until 2019. Even at that point, after constructing the Eagles’ first Super Bowl championship team in 2017, it wasn’t always sunny. But thanks to an early lesson he learned from Amaro, Roseman was prepared.

“At one point earlier in my tenure, Ruben and I were on a podium together … I think we were actually at the stadium, and they said, ‘What’s your biggest surprise?’” he said. “And I said, ‘You know, after watching the [negative] response to Ruben, after all the success that he had, I realized that just winning in Philadelphia once — I always had this vision that you win a world championship here, you’re god for life, and clearly that’s not going to happen.’

“I was kind of joking, and then we won in ’17 and there was a moment in 2020 where my boys were watching a Phillies game … and there was a chant, ‘Fire Howie,’ in the stands. And it was like, we’d made the playoffs three of the last four years, won a world championship, you thought that was pretty good, and then you remember. I remembered my moment on the podium with [Amaro], where it’s, in this city — which I appreciate, I really do — nothing in the past guarantees your success or your standing in the future."

But Roseman said he has heard “Go Birds” chants all over the world, whether it’s walking back from dinner in Italy or on safari in South Africa. It doesn’t sound as if he would change a thing about Philly fans.

“Philly fans, they’re unbelievable,” he said. “Unbelievable.”