The Eagles might have had a huge offseason when it comes to players, but their front office has been hit hard yet again. Key executives from within the organization continue to be poached by other teams in the league, leaving Howie Roseman and company very much behind the eight ball, but how can they stop that from happening?
This week alone has been stressful. On Tuesday, Vice President of Football Operations, Catherine Raiche, left the Eagles to join Andrew Berry (another former Eagles exec) in Cleveland. One day later, Andy Weidl’s younger brother Casey, who was the Director of Scouting Operations, was fired. As if that wasn’t hard enough to swallow, Andy is a leading candidate for the Steelers GM vacancy, which would mean that the front office has been absolutely gutted.
If Andy doesn’t get the job with Pittsburgh, it’s fair to assume he might consider a career elsewhere since the Eagles just fired his brother. We don’t really know the reasoning behind the move, but it comes at such a strange time after the Eagles have received national praise for what appears to be a stellar draft class.
On top of that, Geoff Mosher mentioned that the Eagles also fired three scouts in addition to Casey Weidl. If you include Ian Cunningham and Brandon Brown, that’s a whopping seven members of the front office department who the Eagles have lost since the end of last season…and another potentially on the horizon.
So, who’s left?
Former Jags GM Dave Caldwell headlines a veteran team. Tom Donahoe has been around for years (and is now famous for his draft day antics) and player personnel executive, T.J. McCreight, has been around NFL circles since 1997. The experience up-top is what allows the Eagles to develop the younger, more inexperienced minds who bring so many more ways of thinking to the table.
With that said, the glue holding the team together is Roseman. The same GM who rubbed Donahoe the wrong way when he drafted Milton Williams last year, deviating from the big board to land his man and pushing Donahoe to a fiery response. We saw Roseman draft players in that exact prototype this year, doubling down on the new-norm. It shouldn’t come as a shock that Baltimore, Philadelphia, and the New York Jets all drafted fantastically well. The Ozzie Newsome school of scouting is paying dividends, but that doesn’t mean Howie can do it all on his own.
The fact that Philadelphia is a hotbed for young forward-thinking minds who are poached within heartbeats of them taking on a role to begin with is a real testament to Roseman’s ability to not only find that talent, but develop it. Jeffrey Lurie’s drive for an analytical focus goes hand in hand with these hires and their rapid growth is being noticed league-wide. The Eagles are doing something right. However, at some point, that turbo roster turnover has to stop.
Photo by John Jones/Icon Sportswire
