The Eagles’ overtures for A.J. Brown had been rejected and pushed back on—and during the process of trying to wriggle the Titans’ receiver free from the team that drafted him in 2019, the Philly cognoscenti gathered in GM Howie Roseman’s office to take a closer look.
Less than an hour into what was supposed to be a deep dive, with the first game they’d studied still on the screen, Nick Sirianni stood up. He’d been in the AFC South with Brown, as a Colts assistant. He’d studied Brown since then, too, to try to find things Philly’s receivers could learn from, and he had something to say.
“I’m good,” the coach announced to the room. “I know this guy. I played against him twice a year. Everything I see here, I already know.”
Roseman responded, “Can we finish this? We got five more games to watch.”
In a way, both guys had made their point. On one hand, if anyone needed to hear conviction in a colleague’s voice to go all in on Brown, with draft picks and a contract, Sirianni gave the room that. On the other, Roseman was implicitly saying to the same crowd, without actually saying it, that he couldn’t get enough of the Pro Bowler. And soon, conviction combined with the desire to see more would manifest in the 2022 draft’s biggest trade.
But big as the trade might seem on the surface, and as fast as we all might match it up with the rest of what’s been a transaction-drunk NFL offseason, this one is another sign of how the Eagles’ reboot has gone the last two offseasons—with Roseman and Sirianni working to pull every lever to keep the team competitive as the roster goes through a pretty thorough retool.
And really, it’s an acknowledgment, too, that figuring out how to build in the NFL doesn’t have an endpoint, where you gradually come upon answers, and eventually get to the point where you have all of them. It’s a moving target that every GM and coach is shooting at.
We’re about to show you that how the Eagles got to, and through, this year’s draft proves it.
