Howie Roseman Having His Own Secret Draft Board Is Disappointing, Not Surprising

Everyone in Philadelphia is still fired up from the Alec Bohm slide from last night. So it’s only fitting that the Eagles swoop in and drop everyone’s serotonin levels on Monday morning. Bo Wulf, Sheil Kapadia, and Zach Berman dropped a bomb shell report detailing a deep dive into the dysfunction of the Eagles front office.

I have not read because The Athletic is subscription based, and I am poor. But in typical millennial fashion, I’ve read MOST of it via screenshots online.

If you were to give a Sparknotes of the article it would be this:

  1. Jeffrey Lurie has emphasized analytics to an exhaustive point. Even after big wins like Green Bay and Buffalo in 2019, he wanted more passing
  2. A flat out lack of communication skills among top brass that trickled down, specifically highlighted by Howie Roseman
  3. There is strenuous division in the front office. To the point that Brian Dawkins, who worked for the team from 2016-18, had to full Dawkins and give an impassioned speech about unity to the front office workplace.

But by far my favorite part of this piece is something as a Howie Roseman naysayer, I should’ve seen coming:

”Roseman is known to keep his own draft board, and scouts who spend months on the road evaluating players can feel marginalized when the rankings they’ve helped assemble, are not followed.” 


A secret draft board?!? Are you kidding me?!

The only reason Roseman should have a secret draft board is if the scouting department wants him to form his own opinions and then present them at the end of the scouting process so they know who NOT to draft. Like fading the picks of a bad gambler.

 

If you lined up the headshots of all 32 GM’s in the National Football League and then said, choose the person who makes his scouting department do tireless work just to ignore it and make his decision based off a secret draft board, I’m choosing Roseman.

 

The guy is a rat through and through. It explains so many of the head-scratching draft day decisions that the top brass, the almighty that be (Roseman/Lurie) are ignoring their scouting department and running their own top secret draft strategy. That highlights the two problems everyone has with the front office: lack of communication, and moves that promote division from within.

 

Personally, it would have been hysterical for all the scouts to have Ja’Marr Chase marked as the player they should choose at 6. Then, Howie Roseman drafts Trey Lance based off a secret board he has locked away in the closet of his NovaCare Complex office. At least then I can be put out of my misery and stop caring about this sinking ship.

 

What might be the most damning portion of this article and what might (finally) do Howie Roseman in is his treatment of employees based off paranoia.

This Big Brother overseer that can read employees texts and confidential info at a moments notice is unacceptable in any workplace. Imagine any of us at our common desk job and our boss takes our phones to read who we’ve been texting that day. That lack of trust and invasion of privacy is a sure fire sign of a toxic work environment. To make matters worse, this reads as if it is perfectly acceptable for Roseman to leak information (we know that’s been done), but when someone else does it then it’s a workplace no no. What a tyrannical way of running a business.

 

The best the Eagles can hope for at this point is that public pressure becomes so prevalent that Lurie ends up in the same situation Josh Harris was with the Sixers. He brought in Daryl Morey after years of dysfunction within the Sixers front office. Harris had to take a step back and realize he had become Public Enemy #1 and needed to make changes to eradicate that. Jeffrey Lurie now finds himself in the same uncomfortable spotlight. Change is needed.

 

By Aidan Powers | April 13, 2021
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