Eagles Howie Roseman Learned Lesson The Hard Way

Sometimes you have to learn the hard way, sort of like Dave Dombrowski is now. The president of baseball operations for the Phillies must not have been paying attention to the Eagles in 2017 and 2018.

Dombrowski opted to run it back with the same core lineup that came up small in the postseason last year, hoping for a better result. He and the Phillies are still waiting for that elusive World Series title with this group and are mired in a stretch of nine losses in their last 10 games to fall 4.5 games behind the New York Mets in the National League East.

There’s plenty of baseball still to be played, but at least the Eagles and their general manager, Howie Roseman, captured Super Bowl 52 before their core began to rot.

Philadelphia won it all in 2017 behind a ‘Hungry Dogs Run Faster’ mantra, Nick Foles’ lightning-in-a-bottle performance, and head coach Doug Pederson’s brazen approval of the famous Philly-Philly play to win a 41-33 shootout win over the dynastic New England Patriots.

In 2018, the GM tried to run it back with an old team that had gotten one year older, and maybe lost some of its hunger. The eighth-oldest team in 2017 became the third-oldest team in 2018, and a pair of 9-7 seasons followed. The ‘new norm,’ as Pederson called it, never happened. In 2020, the Eagles had fully flamed out, going 4-11-1, and that led to the firing of Pederson.

Roseman admitted to letting emotions stand in the way, liking the players on the 2017 team so much that he didn’t want to see many of them leave. He wanted to do everything he could to run it back.

He wasn’t making that mistake this offseason after the Eagles won Super Bowl 59. There were defections aplenty on defense. Even on offense, it might have been tempting to scrounge up the $10 million per year Mekhi Becton got from the L.A. Chargers, but Roseman had to draw the line. He picked this year to try to save cash, even playing hardball with popular tight end Dallas Goedert, whom Roseman drafted seven years ago.

Avonte Maddox and Darius Slay would have liked to return. Kenny Gainwell and others, too. Roseman wasn’t doing it. He drew the line.

Will it work, bringing in so many new pieces on defense? Time will tell, and the clock has begun to tick on the answer with two weeks of OTAs in the books and a one-day minicamp on Tuesday.

Then, it will be time for training camp when the clock begins to tick faster. Hunger shouldn’t be an issue with some of the pieces Roseman brought in still looking for a Super Bowl ring, such as A.J. Dillon, Azeez Ojulari, Adoree Jackson, and Joshua Uche, among others.

Chemistry might be an issue, but it's a worthwhile gamble given the excellent culture head coach Nick Sirianni has established in his locker room. At the least, Roseman learned his lesson from running it back the first time the Eagles won a Super Bowl.

It’s a lesson that Dombrowski needs to learn now. The hard way.