Roseman is on board with Hurts, but history says fingers come and go
The Philadelphia Eagles’ season is over, and general manager Howie Roseman will make one thing clear: His quarterback. He’s a keeper.
“When you have players like that, they are like fingers on your hand,” he will say. “You can’t even imagine that they are not part of you, that they are not here.” Now wait for it. “That’s how we feel,” he said, “about Carson.”
The year was 2021, about 365 days ago. The quarterback was Carson Wentz. The sentiment was seemingly sincere. The moment – just days after the end of a difficult season – a likely factor. But just one electric bill later – one month – Roseman needed four-finger gloves. Wentz was gone, having followed Doug Pederson off campus, and the Eagles effectively were onto the Jalen Hurts era.
A quick-reaction game, that football. Roseman is a public figure, responsible to answer questions a half-dozen times a year, give or take a Zoom connection. He is typically forthcoming with his responses, even if they are necessarily caked with out clauses. The man is a lawyer, after all. Blab out loud long enough and anyone can get snared in a contradiction. The Eagles vice president and general manager blabbed last January and had to know what was coming the next time he gave his end-of-the-season report to the public.
Fingers. Hands. Wentz. That. “Thanks for reminding me,” Roseman said before that same camera Wednesday. “That ‘fingers on my hand’ comment must come from having a lot of kids. I think that in any position, opportunities come about in this league -- I’m certainly not talking about the quarterback position -- where you have to make decisions about what’s best for the franchise. And I think last year with Carson, we had to figure out what really made the most sense. When we got the offer that we did, that changed there. I understand that.”
The Indianapolis Colts overwhelmed Roseman with an offer for an overcompensated quarterback prone to injury and turnovers, so he made a trade that could redefine his franchise. It’s one reason the Eagles will have the 15th, 16th and 19th picks in the first round of this year’s draft and a different task.
This time, instead of moving a quarterback to acquire draft capital, Roseman can use the draft capital to help boost the chances of Hurts to move from a Pro Bowl alternate to a Final Four quarterback. Wednesday, he said that was his plan. Kind of. Asked if he were comfortable with Hurts as his quarterback, he unfurled a 60-word response about growth and leadership and work ethic and taking a bull by the horn. But was that a yes?
“Yes,” he finally said.
So Team Quarterback Factory will go with Hurts in 2022-23, trusting him to help win another playoff spot and then perform better than he did in his only postseason start, a 31-15 loss and an affront to his position last weekend in Tampa. It’s a reasonable approach, and the right one, and can’t be confused with what happened the last time Roseman entered a postseason.
Unlike Wentz, who did have one MVPcaliber season to his credit in a season when he contributed heavily to a world championship, no GM will be text-blasting Roseman with offers for Hurts, who is good, but not that good. So the temptation will be muffled. Yet that two-year swirl of draft-pick and quarterback activity has presented Roseman with the opportunity to parlay his three picks into a quarterback upgrade.
And Wednesday, he technically gave himself that option.
“We want to build a team that has home playoff games, that gets to play in front of our fan base, and build a team that gets a bye,” Roseman said. “So those opportunities, those assets allow us to continue to build and really allow us to add good players to this team.
“Our job is to look at everything, to evaluate every position, every player. We do that not only for right now in this moment, but so we have information available when players come available at any position.”
Any position. Any. As for one position – chosen at random – Aaron Rodgers could become available, as could Russell Wilson, or maybe Matt Ryan, perhaps Jimmy Garoppolo. The vision of any one of them throwing to DeVonta Smith and Dallas Goedert could be enough for the ever-aggressive Roseman to conclude that it would shove the Eagles into a more favorable postseason seeding next season.
Even if those three early picks would be better spent on defensive help, the Eagles proved not long ago that acquiring a franchise quarterback was an organizational obsession. It’s how the whole Carson Wentz carry-on began in the first place.
As for Wednesday, Eagles coach Nick Sirianni was stressing that he soon will meet with Hurts and eventually will engage in advanced film study, lacing in some technical coach-speak just to prove he was serious.
Good plan. Check back in a month.