Eagles Howie Roseman's Unique Roster Building And Challenges Faced By Front Office

The Eagles general manager has collected several high draft picks of other teams, as the front office tries to create financial balance.

Eagles general manager Howie Roseman / Ed Kracz/Eagles on SI

PHILADELPHIA – Howie Roseman may have assembled one of the more unique rosters in the NFL. Maybe in league history.

The Eagles general manager has five first-round draft picks on the 53-man roster. More specifically, it’s five first-round draft picks of other teams. All five came among the top-20 picks in their respective drafts and all five arrived this past offseason.

Roseman also collected five newcomers that were third-round picks. Three are on the active roster; the other two are on the practice squad.

Here are the five first-rounder of other teams:

RB Saquon Barkley, 5 overall, 2018

LB Devin White, 5 overall, 2019

OL Mekhi Becton, 11 overall, 2020

WR Jahan Dotson, 16 overall, 2022

QB Kenny Pickett, 20 overall, 2022

Aside from Pickett, who is Jalen Hurts’ primary backup, are all impactful players, which could make Roseman a hoot to hang out with at yard sales, where he probably feels like he can turn other peoples’ "trash" into treasure.

Eagles WR Jahan Dotson / Ed Kracz/Eagles on SI

The third-rounders are:

QB Will Grier, 100, 2019 (practice squad)

LB Zack Baun, 74, 2020

LB Oren Burks, 88, 2018

DB JT Woods, 79, 2022 (practice squad)

DT Byron Young, 70, 2023

As unique as this situation may be, Roseman and his assistant general manager, Alec Halaby, understand another unique situation, and that is the top-heavy nature of their roster from a financial perspective.

Several players are consuming large salary-cap bites, such as Hurts, A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, Jordan Mailata, Landon Dickerson, and Bryce Huff, among others. That means the Eagles need players such as draft picks and other teams’ castoffs to balance things out.

“With our particular roster, when you either draft or acquire good players, you end up paying them,” said Halaby. “The downstream of that has certain implications for what you can acquire…

“I think it is incumbent on you to hit on through all the acquisition pathways, right? Like, there's the draft, there's undrafted, there's the lower end of the pro market, there's waiver claims, there's transactions throughout the year. So yeah, you have to really be executing at a high level in all those different all those different areas. That's incumbent on you, just because you've allocated a lot of your salary already.”

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