Eagles trade out of first round at NFL draft
PHILADELPHIA » After 31 picks, six trades and an entire night of fans booing NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, the Eagles were on the clock around 11:20 p.m. for the 32nd and final pick in the first round of the draft Thursday night.
It netted quarterback Lamar Jackson, only for the Baltimore Ravens, who traded back into the round.
The Eagles get second and fourth-rounders this year, and a second-rounder in 2019. The teams also exchanged fourthround picks this year.
“We felt like the value was right for us,” vice president of football operations Howie Roseman said. “We were expecting to pick at 32 and we had some guys we really liked on the board. We just had to weigh all those things. We didn’t trade out just to trade out. There’s not many times that you get an opportunity to move back in a draft and pick up a secondround pick. So, we just felt like that was good value for us.”
While the deal gives the Eagles at least one pick on the second day of the draft, and future capital, it’s just not very sexy to spin defense of a Super Bowl title by trading out of the first day to get to the second day. You expected just a bit more from the organization hyping its new state of the art draft room.
Jackson obviously was on the list of guys the Eagles figured would attract outside interest. The Eagles also are comfortable dealing with the Ravens and Ozzie Newsome, who Joe Douglas worked for. All of that and the quality of player available left in the first round combined to make a trade back the best move available.
“Our balance was the short term versus the long term,” Roseman said. “And the value (of talent) in the second round as opposed to the first round where we were, was important.”
The 32nd pick was the latest the Eagles would have selected in the first round, surpassing the 2005 lottery in which defensive tackle Mike Patterson came off the board with the 31st pick.
Assuming the Eagles hold on to their second-round selection, this will be the latest the Eagles have picked since they took quarterback Kevin Kolb off the board with the 37th overall pick in 2007. The Eagles own the 52nd overall pick Friday.
The draft started two minutes late, at 8:07 p.m. The crowd at AT&T Stadium wouldn’t stop booing Goodell, who, surrounded by Dallas icons Roger Staubach, Troy Aikman and Jason Witten, playfully asked the people why they were booing the Cowboys. They kept it up through every pick.
Ten minutes later the Browns took Heisman Trophy winner Baker Mayfield off the board, blowing up a lot of mock drafts. Fittingly, Mayfield didn’t attend the draft.
Sam Darnold, almost everyone’s first pick, slipped to No. 3, where the Jets honored their pre-draft commitment to trade up for a passer.
The first trade came at 8:52, the Bills moving up to No. 7 with their choice of the quarterback Josh’s – Rosen and Allen. They rolled with Allen, whose Twitter feed when he was 15 years old had some questionable material. Wonder which NFL team put that out there to disrupt boards?
There were seven trades in the first round. One for Rosen, the Bills moving up the board. The Saints traded away a firstrounder and a future firstround choice to get back into the round to select pass rusher Marcus Davenport.
The Bills moved up slightly with another first-rounder to get linebacker Tremaine Edmunds.
The Packers moved up after a retreat to lock down cornerback Jaire Alexander.
The Titans and new head coach Mike Vrable got ahead of the Patriots to choose linebacker Rashan Evans.
And the Eagles shipped their pick to the Ravens.
It was not a surprise when the Giants selected running back Saquon Barkley of Penn State with the second pick. Or even when the Jets, who invested heavily to move up the draft board, chose a quarterback with the third pick. Sam Darnold got the call.
When the Browns selected cornerback Denzel Ward, not defensive end Bradley Chubb with the fourth pick, it was clear that new GM John Dorsey was putting his stamp on the draft.
NFL Network draft analyst Mike Mayock paid a compliment to offensive line coach Harry Hiestand, now with the Bears, who developed the sixth (Quentin Nelson) and ninth (Mike McGlinchey) picks of the draft while at Notre Dame. Hiestand hails from Radnor High. McGlinchey attended Penn Charter.