Eagles Day 2 NFL Draft Wrap: Howie Roseman Makes One Pick, Two Trades

It was after 11 p.m. east coast time on Friday when Eagles general manager Howie Roseman engineered his second trade of the NFL Draft. Shortly after that, came deal No. 3.

His first deal came on Thursday, when he jumped up one spot with the Kansas City Chiefs in the first round, going from No. 32 to 31 to ensure they got Alabama linebacker Jihaad Campell. On Friday night, he stayed put in the second round to grab Texas safety Andrew Makuba.

"It was a day full of emotions man,” said Makuba on a Zoom call after he was picked. “Emotions all over the place. Overall, I was sitting there waiting for that phone to ring. Once I saw who it was you should have seen how fast I jumped out of my seat. Everyone is excited. I'm happy man. I feel like I'm in a great situation. A great position.”

Roseman said he believes Makuba can play slot and safety, but he’ll start in the safety room.

“We’re looking to add competition to that position, but we really stayed true to our board at that point," said the GM. "We had a couple of guys there that we liked. We considered moving back, but we really liked Andrew.”

The fireworks arrived in the third round. That’s when the retreat down the draft board began.

First, Roseman went from No. 96 to 101 in a deal with the Falcons, who owned that pick as part of the league’s compensatory pick formula. Philadelphia also collected a 2026 fifth-round pick from Atlanta in the deal. The Falcons used the pick they got from the Eagles to select safety Xavier Watts.

“When we’re picking where we were in the third round, we’re really watching the board looking for opportunities to move up, and to kind of watching where it was and where we felt like there was an opportunity to get somebody who was maybe a little higher on our board, then the opportunity where there was kind of a sweet spot on our board,” said Roseman. “As we got close to our pick, we had a couple of opportunities there that we felt like kind of maximized where we were on our board.”

Roseman wasn’t done. He moved out of pick 101 and out of the third round in a deal with the Broncos. The Eagles traded picks 101 and 134 to Denver for a fourth-round pick at 111. He also moved up four spots in the round to 130 while grabbing a sixth-round selection at pick 191.

That means Roseman owns six picks on Saturday’s final day of the draft, rounds four through seven. If they make all six, that would be a surprise given the way Roseman typically motors his way around a draft board.

“Getting the pick next year, I think we’ll be at 12, 13 picks next year and lot of them in the first five rounds,” he said. “I think obviously that’s exciting. Not saying we don’t have things we want to improve on this football team right now because we do, but again we felt like the move down (Saturday) gave us an opportunity in the fourth round here to kind of sleep on it and really get our board set and ready.

“Having six picks (Saturday) is a great opportunity to improve our football team on the third day. It’s a really fun day for us, and we just felt like it made sense to make those two moves with where the board was at.”