To Rebuild the Eagles, Howie Roseman Worked His ‘Magic’

“To have the guts to face very difficult decisions head-on and make moves for the betterment of the organization — and they work — to me, that speaks volumes to Howie’s approach,” said Thomas Dimitroff, the general manager for the Atlanta Falcons from 2008 to 2020. “There aren’t that many in the league right now who could go toe to toe with Howie in that space.”

N.F.L. teams that win championships with young rosters usually face tough choices about committing significant money to the players who could form the core for multiple winning seasons. But when those contracted players don’t perform as well as expected, untangling the roster often takes years before the franchise contends for a title again. Roseman’s daring approach is the rare exception, though it wasn’t without errors.

“It’s easy to try to win people and keep people on your positive side. You know, like, ‘I’m going to do this because I don’t want the criticism out there,’” Dimitroff said. “There are oftentimes people out there in that role who are concerning themselves too much about how they’re perceived versus doing what’s best for the organization — but that’s not Howie.”

The post-title rebuild wasn’t Roseman’s first. In 2015, the Eagles stripped Roseman of his general manager title and handed the roster decisions to Chip Kelly, then the team’s head coach. A disaster followed: Kelly traded running back LeSean McCoy, the Eagles’ best offensive player. The Eagles were 6-9 before firing Kelly in the final week of that season.

“Most people would have been kind of defeated by that and discouraged,” Joe Banner, the Eagles team president from 2001 to 2012, said of Roseman’s setbacks. “He used that time to try to look back and learn from any mistakes he made so that if he did get another chance, he was even better.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/28/sports/football/eagles-howie-roseman-philadelphia.html