Georgia to Eagles Pipeline: The Two People 'Primarily Responsible'

The Philadelphia Eagles have dipped into the Georgia Bulldogs program five times over two years.

PHILADELPHIA - The Athens to Philadelphia pipeline has been engineered in record time, and the architects of the project for the Philadelphia Eagles were identified by general manager Howie Roseman over draft weekend.

The names Phil Bhaya and Alan Wolking aren't household ones in the Delaware Valley, but perhaps they should be after the University of Georgia helped populate over 10 percent of the Eagles' projected roster over the past 24 months.

It started with the 2022 draft when the Eagles used a targeted trade-up to select defensive tackle Jordan Davis with the 13th overall pick and then watched Butkus Award-winning linebacker Nakobe Dean fall to them in the third round. 

Fast-forward a year and the targeted trade-up was for defensive tackle Jalen Carter at No. 9 overall, followed by edge rusher Nolan Smith at No. 30. After another move up in the fourth round to snare cornerback Kelee Ringo and a Day 3 deal for running back D'Andre Swift, another former Bulldog, and you have six Georgia players that you can put in pen (barring injury) on the 53-man roster.

Bhaya, the Eagles’ director of draft management, and Wolking, the director of player personnel, are the two scouts most responsible for patrolling the campus of the two-time defending national champions.

“Phil Bhaya is primarily responsible for the SEC,” Roseman said during the draft. “He has over-the-top responsibilities as well. Phil is a local guy who played at Princeton, and he's a tremendous young scout. He has a pretty wide skill set. And then Alan Wolking goes every year, and obviously, we have other guys who have been in there.”

While both scouts have been shooting stars in the organization, it's not like they are uncovering rocks in the SEC, college football's toughest conference and one that also nabbed Philadelphia Alabama stars DeVonta Smith and Landon Dickerson in the 2021 draft.

Bhaya is a South Jersey native who was a football star at Haddonfield High School before earning All-Ivy League honors as a defensive back at Princeton where he was also a team captain.

His scouting career began with the Eagles in 2014 and his rise up the organization has been steady, from scouting assistant to NFS (National Football Service) scout before he was given the Northeast, and finally the crown jewel for scouts on the road, the Southeast in 2021. Now, he's helping oversee the whole process as a filter for Roseman as the director of draft management.

Wolking is more of a veteran presence and has been on the road in the Midwest and Southeast for years starting in the Andy Reid area before getting the bump to director of player personnel.

It's probably the stuff that isn't as obvious that allows personnel executives like Bhaya and Wolking to stand out, however.

“I think those guys do a tremendous job in the SEC,” Roseman said. “It was funny because I was saying this, and I'm not trying to overshadow those guys because they do a great job, but I went to Georgia last year at practice, and I remember coming back and [coach Nick Sirianni] was like, ‘Who did you like there?’ And I'm like, ‘I like the whole defense.’”

The reality is that most college football fans could sit on their couches Saturday afternoons and gauge that there is a lot of talent in places like Georgia and Alabama.

The important part of scouting is building relationships and gathering the kind of information that may cement a pick vs. moving away from one.

In 2021, the Eagles' staff understood Smith had the mental makeup to overcome his 166-pound frame and Dickerson's troubling injury issues in college wouldn't prevent him from excelling early in his career.

By the next season, Philadelphia got the skinny on Davis' conditioning and Dean's pec issue that had a number of teams putting a red flag on the LB. This year it was getting comfortable with Carter's need to mature and Ringo's shoulder issues.

You need boots on the ground for that kind of intel.

The relationships are so strong between the Eagles and the Georgia program that Bulldogs defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann was brought in to interview as a potential replacement for Jonathan Gannon before the Eagles settled on Sean Desai.

"A lot of the things we do are about relationships," Roseman said. "Obviously, we know Coach Schumann, but we know a lot of people at Georgia throughout the years, and we don't try to put one person in a position where they're the only person we talk to. We try to investigate with as many people as possible, to get as much information as possible.

"That's what we did here with all these Georgia guys."

The Eagles are also cognizant of one of the first rules of the process -- never scout the helmet, even when that helmet has been so successful.

"Certainly, I know the jokes about Georgia, they're coming, and maybe they have been there, but for us, it's about the individual players," Roseman said. "If we were going to bypass a player just because we had taken another player from that school, I mean, that would be silly, too.

"For us, where we took the players was based on their grade, and obviously a great tribute to Coach [Kirby] Smart and his staff about the kind of players and people they develop."

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-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 "Football 24/7 and a daily contributor to ESPN South Jersey. You can reach him at jmcmullen44@gmail.com or on Twitter @JFMcMullen