Roseman Talks About His Time Away

Howie Roseman talked to Peter King of MMQB about his year away from the personnel game as a result of Chip Kelly‘s power play. Turns out, he spent much of that time studying other professional sports operations in hopes of gleaning information that would help him the second time around.

On Friday, Roseman told me that in his time away from a position of influence with the Eagles last year, he learned about the business of sport and the cultivation and development of players from franchise-runners in the NBA, Major League Baseball, NHL and the English Premier League. That’s right. He said that his time at a British sports seminar last November gave him a chance to learn a lot from some of the power teams in world soccer—Chelsea, Manchester United, Bayern Munich, Manchester City—about the importance of character in team-building, and about the skills needed to meld players speaking different languages from different cultures with a team of totally different people.

“That was so valuable,” Roseman said, because player development in sports is of universal importance. “And talking to people in basketball, hockey and baseball helped a lot too. I believe experience is a great teacher. All experiences. In the middle of your career, you can’t often take the time or use the energy to take a step back and really learn about your business. But sometimes that’s the best thing for you in business—to take a step back and learn. I was given that opportunity, and Jeffrey [Lurie, the Eagles’ owner] wanted me to learn as much as I could, and for that I’m grateful. So when this opportunity came up now, I was able to hit the ground running. I’d been thinking about so much of the stuff about building a team.”

Roseman sprang into action the first chance he got. He signed Zach Ertz, Brent Celek, Lane Johnson, Vinny Curry and Malcolm Jenkins to extensions. Re-upped with Sam Bradford right before the start of free agency. Made three trades — including one with Miami that got the Eagles into the top 10 of the draft — and signed six players in the first wave of free agency.

And there’s more to come, as King wrote.

What Roseman still wants to do is to find a receiver with deep speed. And he’d love to get burgeoning star Fletcher Cox signed long-term. But what he’s done so far is, well, a lot.

“What sticks out to me,” Roseman said, “is how happy our players have been when we sign them. [Tight end] Brent Celek told me when his agent told him the deal got done, he had tears in his eyes. Sam Bradford told me, ‘I’m so fired up! I told my agent I wanted this done three days ago!’ [Defensive end] Vinny Curry grew up an Eagles fan; this is home for him. So that’s something I’m really pleased about—we have a core of players who really want to be here.”

You can read the entire piece here.