If he had to do it all over again? Even knowing what he knows now about Carson Wentz?
He would have drafted Jalen Hurts again.
Howie Roseman said Wednesday morning in a conversation with Angelo Cataldi on the WIP Morning Show that he has no regrets about drafting Hurts in the second round last year despite it seemingly leading to Wentz's 2020 struggles and eventually his exit from Philadelphia.
Stay in the game with the latest updates on your beloved Philadelphia sports teams! Sign up here for our All Access Daily newsletter.
“It’s funny, because I look at what’s going on around the league and I think specifically about San Francisco and they sat there and they said, ‘Hey, we like our starting quarterback (Jimmy Garoppolo), but we’ve got to make sure he stays on the field,’ and they traded three 1st-round picks to go up and get another (Trey Lance), and their quarterback had been a starting quarterback in the Super Bowl and they spent a lot of picks on that.
“And that’s what we were saying last year, you know? We love Carson but we’ve played four playoff games and we’ve needed our backup quarterback in all of them. It’s too important of a position to not have that. Just thinking about where we were at the moment, it was the right thing to do. It’s a hard decision but it was the right thing to do.”
Drafting Hurts had a ripple effect throughout the organization, and Roseman, presented by Cataldi with the notion that the Hurts pick directly led to Wentz’s poor performance, did not deny that.
The Eagles absorbed $35 million in dead money when they unloaded Wentz, but they got a couple draft premium picks from the Colts for Wentz and the opportunity to turn the reins over to Hurts.
NFL
And Roseman made it clear that the Eagles don't just see Hurts as a one-year stopgap and they're not just enamored of Hurts’ intangibles like leadership, work ethic and character.
They believe his skill set is an ideal match for what the NFL is becoming, and they're counting on him becoming the franchise’s long-term answer at quarterback.
“He was the SEC Offensive Player of the Year as a freshman, he continued to do that in the Big 12 when he went to Oklahoma, he was the runner-up as a Heisman finalist, you guys see his leadership,” Roseman said.
“But let’s not forget his skill set. We drafted him in the second round not just because he’s a good person and he’s a good leader, but he’s a really good player, and when we looked at kind of the guys who were successful in the National Football League and where the league was going, we took him because of those reasons, because of what kind of player he is.
“At the end of the day, I think we talk a lot about Jalen and his leadership and what kind of person he is, which are really positive things, but the guy can play and he can win. And … all of us have to show it and prove it and we’re excited about that, but certainly he’s got a skill set that we’re excited about.”