Howie Roseman's one roster decision has caused him 6 years of losing sleep

Call it an NFL general manager’s worst nightmare.

It’s Day 1 of the NFL Draft, the latter stages of Round 1 when the board gets more unpredictable with each selection. Your war room is aligned. The pick is submitted… 

And another team trades up to take a player at the same position with the very next selection.

Those are the kind of draft weekend red flags that keep GMs up at night — and one of the best in the business, Howie Roseman of the Philadelphia Eagles, is still losing sleep over this exact scenario six years later.

Howie Rosman still can’t believe he passed on drafting Justin Jefferson during the 2020 NFL Draft

Roseman has way more draft hits than misses over the past decade, especially in the first three rounds. And if there was a draft class ripe for a miss — it was 2020, when the draft was held virtually and the talent pool was muddied due to COVID protocols.

Still, the Eagles’ decision to select wide receiver Jalen Reagor with the 21st overall pick that year still ranks as one of the biggest blemishes on Roseman’s resume.

In fact — Roseman admitted on the Bussin' With The Boys podcast that passing on Justin Jefferson, who went one pick later to the Minnesota Vikings via a trade up with the Buffalo Bills, is the one roster decision he still regrets:

“I think there’s one that’s pretty obvious. One guy who we didn’t draft is going to the Hall of Fame. … But you know what? At the end of the day, that’s what I’m saying. The mistakes kill me. I think about the picks that we have and who we could have gotten and the things that we did wrong, and it helps me get better. I feel like I’m constantly trying to learn and be better, and figure out whys — why you make mistakes, and why you’re picking guys that you should have picked other guys. 

“So, I feel like when you make a mistake, and they’re big mistakes, the worst thing that can happen is that you don’t learn from it. And so I really feel like, if you don’t make mistakes like that, we probably don’t come back and play in two Super Bowls in the last three years.”

While this topic still stings for Eagles fans, no matter how many Super Bowls they play in, they can sleep easy knowing that their relentless GM will stop at nothing to right obvious wrongs. Picturing the Eagles with Justin Jefferson is a scary proposition for the rest of the NFL, but had Philly made the right move in that 2020 draft, would they have pulled off one of the biggest trade heists since the millennium for A.J. Brown? 

It’s great to see Roseman out there owning this one, especially with Reagor now in Los Angeles trying to stick with his fourth NFL team in six pro seasons. Really, this is the exact mentality that gives Philly hope to be football’s next dynasty.