Eagles Day 2 Draft Primer: A More Targeted Approach?

Philly landed difference-makers in the first round but had to surrender draft capital to do it, perhaps foreshadowing a more targeted approach on Friday night

PHILADELPHIA - About the lone negative to the Eagles' splash moves on Thursday night in the first round of the 2022 NFL Draft was the downshift from 10 picks in the process to five total and just four remaining as the organization heads into Day 2.

That means Philadelphia has to be a little more targeted when it comes to its needs moving forward unless Howie Roseman is able to recoup some of the lost capital, something he at least joked could be on the way when apologizing to Andy Weidl and his personnel department after trading up to draft Georgia defensive tackle Jordan Davis and dealing for star receiver A.J. Brown.

"We have two more days to go here.," he said. "We have a lot of work to do. Obviously, when we started with ten picks I think Andy and his staff are a little mad at me right now for that

"Let’s just see what happens here. But we have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of areas we want to continue to improve on this football team."

For now the Eagles enter Day 2 with picks No. 51 and 83 and also have only two selections on Saturday (Nos. 154 and 237).

Roseman could add to that number with trades down or deals for veteran players like Jalen Reagor, Andre Dillard or even Nate Herbig.

For now here's three players to hone in on in the second and third rounds on Friday night:

Second Round, No. 51:

The guess here is that the top cornerbacks left and edge rushers are coming off pretty quickly and that would lead you toward safeties with the Eagles.

Philadelphia still needs a running mate for Anthony Harris on the back end and getting the versatile Jalen Pitre of Baylor to push Marcus Epps would make sense. The Eagles have showed a lot of interest in Pitre in the pre-draft process per Baylor coach Dave Aranda and he might get pushed down a bit due to that prolifiration of edge rushers and CBs at the top of the second round.

If Pitre goes, focus on Maryland's Nick Cross as the potential contingency.

The wild card to all this could be Nebraska center Cam Jurgens, who would be more of a luxury pick with Jason Kelce still in uniform but the Eagles like Jurgens so much I could still see them pulling the trigger despite the downtick in draft capital.

Third Round, No. 83:

The aforementioned edge-rushing group worthy of second-round grades like Penn State's Arnold Ebiketie, Houston's Logan Hall, Minnesota's Boye Mafe, USC's Drake Jackson, and injured Michigan star David Ojabo is good but the third tier also features some serious upside.

For the Eagles, that might mean the lengthy Alex Wright of UAB because his prototypical size, along with Kingsley Enagbare of South Carolina and Western Kentucky's DeAngelo Malone, a player the Eagles did plenty of homework on.

-John McMullen contributes Eagles coverage for SI.com's Eagles Today and is the NFL Insider for JAKIB Media. You can listen to John, alongside legendary sports-talk host Jody McDonald every morning from 8-10 on ‘Birds 365,” streaming live on YouTube. John is also the host of his own show "Extending the Play" on AM1490 in South Jersey. You can reach him at jmcmullen44@gmail.com or on Twitter @JFMcMullen