Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports
The Eagles proved you can win the NFL offseason.
My name is RJ Ochoa and I cover the Dallas Cowboys here at SB Nation, which makes what I am about to talk about very difficult and not at all fun.
The Philadelphia Eagles are going to play in the Super Bowl on Sunday because they had the best offseason of any team in the NFL.
There. I said it. Fine. I don’t feel any better. In all seriousness though, Dallas Cowboys EVP Stephen Jones loves to talk about how you cannot win any games in the offseason, but if you look at the Eagles and the game they are going to try and win shortly, they are sort of proof that you can.
This is something that I talked about this week on the NFC East Mixtape, a podcast that Brandon Lee Gowton from Bleeding Green Nation and I host every week where we talk about the best division in football. It is accessible on all of our NFC East blog podcast networks around these parts.
If you follow an NFC East team, then you know how annoying the Eagles are in the offseason because they are aggressive throughout it all. Howie Roseman went totally and completely Super Saiyan, and because of it the Eagles might be the final team left standing.
Here are the three moves that stand out the most in my opinion.
Trading for A.J. Brown
On the first night of the 2022 NFL Draft, the Eagles became the latest team to trade for a franchise receiver when they sent a first-round pick to the Tennessee Titans in exchange for A.J. Brown.
A lot of people, myself included, wondered why the move was necessary. The Eagles had to pay Brown, which they did right away by giving him a new deal, and they were coming off of DeVonta Smith’s rookie season where he looked like the kind of receiver who could carry the team on offense. Why do you need a WR1 when you already have a WR1?
You know what is better than a WR1, people? Two WR1s! This is a principle that Howie Roseman understands like no other and it pisses me off to no end. He is Adam Driver in The Last Jedi constantly shouting “more!” as he adds and adds and adds and adds.
Signing Haason Reddick
On the latest episode of the Mixtape I said that this is the move that Howie deserves the least amount of credit for and I meant it in a unique way.
First of all, Hasson Reddick has been incredible for the Eagles. He has turned in one of the best defensive performances that anybody has had this season. All of this is objective fact.
The thing is though that the Eagles signed Reddick to a modest (using that word loosely) 3-year, $45M deal. They didn’t expect this because nobody did. Hasson Reddick deserves all of the credit in the world for establishing himself as one of the best defenders in the NFL and most important pass rushers on a team that has too many of them.
Pouncing on James Bradberry
The New York Giants are still in the process of doing some rebuilding which makes the fact that they were a playoff team all the more incredible, but it is important to know when you remember that they released veteran cornerback James Bradberry last May.
While the salary cap can be toyed with it is still a very real thing, and the Giants were forced to move on from Bradberry for salary cap reasons. So what did the Eagles do, you ask? Did they rest on the fact that they already had Darius Slay roaming their secondary or did they pounce on an opportunity to strengthen the overall group? Of course they went for it and look where they are now, boasting arguably the best secondary in the entire NFL.
Unlike Brown and Reddick, the Bradberry move sort of fell into the Eagles’ lap, but they are the least apologetic team in the NFL for trying to be better. They will pursue any and every avenue to improve their roster, and it is a big reason that they are one game away from potentially bringing home another Lombardi Trophy.
