To say that the Eagles shocked the league in last year’s draft would be an understatement. They had just given starting quarterback Carson Wentz a long-term, $134 million deal less than a year ago. When they were on the clock in the second round, most plugged-in fans were debating whether receiver Denzel Mims, cornerback Kristian Fulton, or safety Jeremy Chinn was the right choice. “Jalen Hurts, quarterback, Oklahoma,” Roger Goodell said. No, that couldn’t be right. He must’ve read the wrong card. Why would a team that just committed to its starting quarterback pick a backup instead of surrounding him with help?
Fast forward to Week 13 of the regular season and Wentz has been benched for Hurts. It was an outcome that fans didn’t expect, the front office itself certainly didn’t expect, and analytics models didn’t expect. Wentz had not been an elite quarterback in 2018 and 2019, but a wide array of evidence suggested he was at least an average one. For him to perform as a bottom-five quarterback was nothing more than a tail risk and, yet, it was the reality.
This move demonstrated the value of avoiding overconfidence in your starting quarterback. It’s a lesson for teams that gave long-term deals to the Andy Daltons and Jay Cutlers of the league. There is an opportunity cost in settling for a quarterback who isn’t an elite one, and the steepness of that opportunity cost is under-appreciated.
The chart above is a bit technical, but it basically shows that offensive performance is more stable over time than defensive performance. It also shows that passing offense performance more closely follows total offense performance than run offense performance. The implication is simple: the most certain path to building a Super Bowl contender is by strengthening your passing offense. The most effective way to do that is to acquire one of the league’s best quarterbacks.
This holds up with how the 2020 season played out at a basic level. The four quarterbacks in the conference championship games were Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Aaron Rodgers, and Tom Brady. This isn’t to say a great run offense or a great defense can’t lead a team to a Super Bowl title. There are obvious examples of teams that did so. But at a macro level, that roster-building strategy is less sustainable. It’s harder to maintain an elite run offense or an elite defense over multiple seasons than it is to maintain an elite passing offense with an elite quarterback on your roster.
Simply put, every team which lacks a reasonably-high certainty that they have an elite quarterback (roughly speaking, a top-6 quarterback) should not be overconfident in their current starter. The Eagles were right to essentially adopt this philosophy last year in drafting Hurts. Their work is clearly not done yet, with Wentz now in Indianapolis and Hurts’ long-term future being uncertain. That is why they must stay the course with their quest to find an elite quarterback for a second consecutive offseason. They’re unexpectedly in a much better position to do so now with the sixth overall pick than they were last year. If one of the top four quarterback prospects is available at pick 6, the Eagles should take advantage of this rare window of opportunity and draft him.
Reason 1. It is unlikely that Jalen Hurts will be an elite, top-6 quarterback
PFF contributor Kevin Cole, whose research I am borrowing from, argued last April the Eagles showed commendable foresight in hedging their bet on Wentz with the selection of Hurts himself. At the time, Cole estimated Wentz had a 20% probability of being a top-6 quarterback and a 60% probability of being in the top-12. As we know, Wentz’s 2020 season was a disaster which prompted his eventual trade to the Indianapolis Colts. That was an outcome in the tails of Cole’s model, and frankly everyone’s if we’re being honest. The value of the Hurts pick wasn’t that he in particular was expected to become a top-tier starter. It was that a quarterback room with both Wentz and Hurts was much more likely to yield one than Wentz and, say, tanking legend Nate Sudfeld.
Cole used a crude, but useful shorthand, method for demonstrating the value of using a second-round pick on Hurts at the time. If we assigned Hurts half of Wentz’s probabilities to reach the top 6 and top 12, the Eagles then raised their probability of having a top-6 quarterback by 8 percentage points and having a top-12 quarterback by 12 percentage points.
| Player | Top-6 | Top-12 |
| Wentz | 20.0% | 60.0% |
| Hurts | 10.0% | 30.0% |
| Either QB | 28.0% | 72.0% |
| % Increase | 40.0% | 20.0% |
Those may sound like small numbers, but they’re not. By definition, every team has a theoretical probability of 19% (6/32) that they have a top-6 quarterback and a 37% probability (12/32) of having one in the top-12. In that context, 8 and 12 percentage point increases are very large.
A two-quarterback strategy doesn’t suit every team equally well. For example, Cole mentions that a prospect with the probabilities he gives Hurts would only improve the Kansas City Chiefs’ probability of having a top-6 quarterback by 2 percentage points and a top-12 quarterback by 1 ½ percentage points (they already have this guy named Patrick Mahomes). That’s a massive reduction in marginal benefit compared to the Eagles.
Cole’s other key point in favor of the Eagles’ decision was the limited upside in non-quarterback players at the 53rd pick: “The 50th percentile outcome for the 53rd pick is slightly below average performance over the first four years, and even the 70th percentile is only marginally above average. Picks really pay off when players hit the 90th percentile or better of their possible outcomes. All picks, not just ones like Hurts, are most valuable at outlier outcomes.” The marginal benefit of a quarterback being a successful pick, even if the probability of failure is somewhat high, outweighs the randomness in non-quarterback prospect performance at the NFL level.
Now, Hurts’ performance in his rookie season should matter too, as it’s the most recent information we have to judge him by. There were certainly some encouraging signs. The most obvious one is that he is already one of the most dangerous runners in the league. With 63 rushing attempts for 354 yards and 3 touchdowns in approximately four games, that would prorate to 1,259 yards and 11 touchdowns for a full season. Even if we assume some mean-reversion for a larger sample size, it’s actually reasonable to expect Hurts to be somewhere in Lamar Jackson’s ballpark on the ground (1,005 rushing yards and 7 touchdowns last season). His quickness and tough running style opens up the playbook for Spread run schemes like GT Counter, a play that pulls both the backside guard and tackle to the play-side.
The issue is that Hurts is nowhere close to Jackson and most other starting NFL quarterbacks as a passer. Namely, he ranked near the bottom of the league with a 52% completion percentage. Among all qualified passers (greater than 20 attempts), he ranked better than just Taysom Hill, Nick Mullens, Daniel Jones, Jake Luton, and Dwayne Haskins in average EPA (-0.13) on competitive first and second downs. Third down performance is more volatile, but even here, Hurts ranked 32nd in average EPA (-0.17) out of 47 qualified passers. It’s fair to argue that a poor supporting cast would drag Hurts’ statistics down. But even metrics which control for that like completion percentage over expectation (CPOE) rank Hurts 37th out of 41st.
One alarming tendency for Hurts is his reluctance to throw to the middle of the field. Only Taysom Hill had a smaller percentage of total pass attempts there. But while Hill was efficient in that sample size, Hurts ranked dead-last in success rate by a wide margin on these passes. The gap between Hurts’ 35% success rate and Gardner Minshew’s 43% success rate (the second-lowest) is greater than the gap between Minshew and the twelfth-worst passer.
It’s staggering to see how many of Hurts’ passes last year were toward the sideline, as the images from NextGen Stats show. It made sense for Pederson to game-plan these passes at a relatively high clip. Coaches should take advantage of their quarterback’s mobility with designed rollouts. But the low volume of passes to the middle runs the risk of giving the defenses tells.
It would be one thing if Hurts simply lacked confidence in these middle-of-field throws. But the issue is deeper than that. An illustrative example comes on a 3rd down in the Week 16 defeat to Dallas. The Eagles are executing a Mesh concept—one that features a pair of shallow crossing routes from opposite sides. This happens to be a staple of the Colts offense in their time with Nick Sirianni as the offensive coordinator. Jalen Reagor runs a good corner-post route to get himself open behind the crossers. Hurts has a clean window to throw a touchdown, but he sails the ball instead. This lack of precision on middle-of-field throws dates back to Hurts’ time in Oklahoma and Alabama as well. Especially at Oklahoma, Mesh is a concept Hurts has repped over-and-over again. This is a concept he should execute in his sleep by now.
Hurts fell to the second round because of tendencies like this. The Eagles likely expected Wentz to be in Philadelphia for several seasons and thought they would have time to develop Hurts. There was no plan for Wentz to leave. But now that Wentz is gone, the equation changes. Hurts goes from high-upside development project to the actual starter. As of now, all of their chips are staked on Hurts being the winning hand.
Reason 2. It is plausible that Hurts will be an average quarterback. Average quarterbacks have leverage when teams lack optionality.
A likely rebuttal to my point about Hurts’ unfavorable passing statistics last season is that statistics don’t tell the whole story. I would agree. A common criticism of quarterback prospects I’ll make (cough Mac Jones) is their tendency to wait until the receiver is already open to throw the ball. This is not true at all of Hurts. That was apparent on a 4th-and-2 touchdown in the red zone against the Saints in which Hurts threw a crisp ball to Jeffery which arrived right when he turned around on a comeback route.
League-wide trends suggest Hurts could make more successful plays if Sirianni and offensive coordinator Shane Steichen press the right easy buttons. Several quarterbacks—including Jared Goff and Baker Mayfield, whom PFF compared Hurts to—thrived with a high volume of play-action. It’s a familiar style of offense for Hurts who played for Lincoln Riley in his lone season at Oklahoma in 2019. The year before (for which FiveThirtyEight has some data), Riley called more play-action passes than any other Power 5 play-caller.
Hurts’ running ability likely enhances the effectiveness of these play-action passes, as defenses get anxious about the threat of two potential runners in the backfield. Cardinals head coach Kliff Kingsbury has said that the quarterback run threat equalizes the effectiveness of play-action from shotgun compared to under center. A great example of this modern play-action game came in Week 15 against Kingsbury’s Cardinals. The defensive end freezes as Hurts fakes the handoff with Miles Sanders. A quarterback who lacks Hurts’ run ability doesn’t give the Eagles the time to set up this bubble screen to Quez Watkins which becomes a touchdown.
But while play-action passes are far more efficient than non-play action passes, they also are more volatile. True dropback passes are more predictive of year-to-year performance. Hurts is considerably less experienced than other young quarterbacks like Joe Burrow who have thrived in the traditional dropback game. Oklahoma’s offense sporadically used true dropback passing concepts. The majority of them consisted of a few core concepts like Mesh and Stick-Slot Fade.
There is another easy button besides play-action that should work well with Hurts: empty sets (notice how many Hurts gifs here involve them). Josh Hermsmeyer found that plays with 5 receivers in a route produce the highest EPA of all non-play action passes. Seth Galina found last year that Jackson and the 2019 Ravens ranked 2nd in passing EPA from empty sets. While the likes of Tom Brady and Drew Brees thrived hitting short option routes from empty sets, Jackson’s average depth of target was 11.8 yards on these plays. The option routes were the Patriots and Saints’ answer against blitzes; Jackson’s legs were the Ravens’ answer for them. Doug Pederson said he thought Jackson was a fair comparison for Hurts. The opportunities for empty sets are a great example of why that may be correct in a narrow sense.
I believe Hurts will improve from his rookie season. The variance inherent in offensive easy-buttons allows for a rebound, even a sharp one. He’s also (marginally) more likely than the average quarterback to produce with these easy buttons because of his athleticism. I, perhaps counter-intuitively, believe the case for drafting a quarterback now is strongest if you believe Hurts will improve. While the probability of Hurts ranking among the elite is small, the probability he’ll be a league-average quarterback is reasonably high. The wave of “middle class” NFL quarterbacks—Jared Goff, Baker Mayfield, Jimmy Garoppolo, Kirk Cousins, among others—shows that play-action heavy schemes of the McVay/Shanahan flavor can mask their deficiencies.
The fundamental problem with joining the middle class of quarterbacks is that play-callers can’t lean on the quick game if the base offense sputters. The Patriots’ 13-3 defeat of the Rams in Super Bowl 53 was perhaps the clearest limitation that an offense faces in this situation. Their use of a 6-1 front stalled the Rams’ Outside Zone-centric run game and the Quarters coverage with two-high safeties kept them in position to stop the deep crossers in their play-action passing game. Fast forward two seasons and the Rams just paid a premium of multiple first round picks to upgrade on Goff with Matthew Stafford.
Paying a premium for average production is an underappreciated risk. The Eagles themselves just saw up close what happens when a quarterback making upwards of $30 million per year suddenly spirals downward. Elite quarterbacks simply do not hit the open market. The Eagles will not have the opportunity to sign one if they conclude Hurts is not among their ranks. If you have some doubts about your starting quarterback (as the majority of teams should), the time to regain leverage in contract negotiations is now, not their contract year. Hurts only has three years left on his rookie deal, so the window to gain that leverage in his contract year is just this offseason and next.
There simply is no guarantee the Eagles will be in as good of a position to draft a quarterback in 2022 as they are now. Last year, three teams in the top 6 (Washington, Detroit, NY Giants) did not draft a quarterback and none of them are in the top 6 in this year’s draft. For 2019, none of the 4 teams in the top 6 (San Francisco, NY Jets, Oakland, Tampa Bay) which didn’t take a quarterback were in the top 6 in 2020. Frankly, there are a lot of garbage teams. Just because your team sucks, that doesn’t mean 5, 10, or even 15 teams can’t suck more than them.
Reason 3. The 2021 quarterback class is unusually deep
The typical concern in deciding to draft a quarterback early is whether a team is reaching for need. I do not believe that should be a concern this year. The consensus top four—Trevor Lawrence (Clemson), Zach Wilson (BYU), Justin Fields (Ohio State), and Trey Lance (North Dakota State)—all are worthwhile prospects who merit being selected in the top ten.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that all of the top four quarterback prospects (and Hurts) are excellent runners. Think back to how Brady and Brees thrive in empty sets. They do it without their legs because they’re football geniuses who consistently know the coverage and know who will be open before the snap. Geniuses aren’t exactly common, and it’s a bad bet to wager a quarterback without legs is that genius (again, cough Mac Jones). The path of least resistance is to orient your offense around your quarterback’s legs, and that’s what college teams increasingly do.
Personally, my order of preference is (1) Lawrence, (2) Lance, (3) Fields, and (4) Wilson. I’ll skip analyzing Lawrence because it’s as certain as it can be that he’ll be picked first overall by the Jacksonville Jaguars. My choice of Lance at (2) is probably the surprising one. To me, the case for selecting Lance is he’s the highest-upside quarterback and he’s also the best at executing the quick passing game. The quick passing game is important because it’s a stable area of quarterback performance. According to Derrik Klassen, Lance had an 86.9% accuracy rate on passes of 1 to 5 yards. That’s a higher rate than every quarterback prospect of the last two years including Burrow.
North Dakota State differs from most college teams in still leaning on traditional dropback passing; the Bison only called a play with an RPO attached 59 times in 13 games in 2019, compared to North Carolina doing so 431 times in 12 games (h/t Seth Galina). A great example of a dropback concept came in the FCS Championship on a Y Cross concept from the empty set. Lance patiently waits for the slot receiver to find the hole between the underneath zone defenders. He then steps up in the pocket amidst pressure to deliver a decisive throw to the middle of the field.
While play-action passing performance is generally volatile, the eye-test on Lance here shows he sells play-fakes excellently. North Dakota State’s usage of the Leak concept particularly shows how well he manipulates his defenses with his eyes and body positioning. The way Lance waits until the last moment to turn his head is superb execution. Lance’s raw arm strength is the cherry on top. While North Dakota State uses traditional under center formations to set up play-action, they executed these plays well in Shotgun too because of Lance’s prowess as a runner.
So why is Fields generally ranked ahead of Lance in consensus rankings? While Lance has unparalleled laser accuracy in the quick game, he gets dinged for inconsistency further down the field. Fields has impressive accuracy in general. In 2019, Fields ranked fourth in SIS’ completion percentage +/- which is similar to CPOE (h/t Benjamin Solak). According to PFF, Fields had the second-lowest off-target throws in 2020. This is a stark contrast from Hurts’ low CPOE metric. Fields regularly throws with anticipation, making his decision before the receivers break their routes. This year’s College Football Playoff semifinal against Clemson was his masterpiece in ball placement on tight-window throws.
I noted Hurts’ anticipation earlier, but Fields possesses this trait at another level. Hurts managed to exploit zone coverages fairly well last year, but he struggled versus man. Against the Saints, Hurts completed just 5 of 16 attempts for 46 yards against man, compared to 12 of 14 attempts for 121 yards on all other passes (h/t @denizselman33). Fields has no such issue completing passes against man, as Clemson’s defense can attest to this year.
Fields is a different kind of runner than Lance and Hurts. He’s more Jackson-like in thriving in the open field off zone reads. Lance stylistically resembles Hurts as a runner in how he picks up yards after contact. North Dakota State’s bread-and-butter quarterback run play was Inverted Veer/Power Read, an option run play in which the quarterback runs off-tackle behind a pulling guard.
It’s sometimes overstated how run ability tempts quarterbacks to hang onto the ball longer than they should, but it’s true for both Hurts and Fields. Hurts ranked dead-last among qualified NFL passers in holding onto the ball for an average of 3.11 seconds. Fields’ average time to throw without the blitz was 3.07 seconds and that figure somehow increased to3.21 seconds against the blitz. Lance had his struggles detecting the blitz, but he at least got rid of the ball quickly when the play-design called for it.
While Wilson is not as gifted of a runner as Hurts and the other three rookies, he makes up for it with his performance out of structure. Wilson achieved an 87.5 passing grade by PFF on passes outside the pocket, trailing only Oklahoma quarterback Spencer Rattler (candidate to be the first overall pick in 2022). The velocity on his throws nearly rivals Lance’s, allowing him to strike the full width of the field.
The BYU offense is remarkably similar to the Shanahan/McVay scheme with its usage of Outside Zone-based play-action passes. Offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes (now at Baylor) would alternate between those plays and Spread formations which set up Air Raid passing concepts. Wilson is somewhat like Hurts in his inexperience with having latitude to make quick decisions in structure. The lack of timing and anticipation surfaced with imprecise throws which exposed the BYU receivers to contact. I believe Wilson is less safe of a bet than Lance and Fields, but I’m willing to swing for upside.
Another important variable is the 2022 draft class which I don’t believe compares well. Rattler shows signs of rivaling the 2021 class, but the rest of the class is a stretch. North Carolina quarterback Sam Howell neither has the run ability nor the quick game experience that Lance and Fields possess (remember how RPO-centric North Carolina’s offense is). It was reasonable to expect Lawrence and Fields would be top five picks before last season, but that certainty does not exist for the following class. The Eagles cannot count on being in a position to draft Rattler next year.
The last point I will make regarding my evaluation of the 2021 prospects is that the presence of Hurts should matter. If you view Lance, Fields, or Wilson as a high-risk, high-reward prospect, keeping Hurts on the roster too affords the Eagles a higher floor. It’s a way to capture the upside at the most important position and also contain the downside. Hurts could start this season if Lance, Fields, or Wilson need more time; he could also come to the rescue in future years if they don’t pan out. This flexibility is the untapped advantage teams like the Eagles need to obtain for themselves in the never-ending, expensive arms race for quarterback talent.
Reason 4. At positions other than quarterback, depth is more important than one star player
A common objection to doubling down on the quarterback position will be the plea for the Eagles to surround Hurts with supporting talent. After all, we just saw that even Mahomes struggles to win a Super Bowl when his offensive line is depleted beyond tolerability. The Eagles absolutely have lots of holes throughout the team. And while a non-quarterback selected in the mid-second round has negative expected value (at the 50th percentile), that isn’t true for a pick in the top ten. If the Eagles choose a receiver like JaMarr Chase or Devonta Smith, a tight end like Kyle Pitts, an offensive tackle like Penei Sewell or Rashawn Slater, a linebacker like Micah Parsons (We Are! Penn State!), or a cornerback like Patrick Surtain or Caleb Farley, they can be pretty confident that player will be above-replacement level. So why pass on the opportunity to acquire a valuable player at one of those positions in favor of a quarterback?
I’ll first tackle why I’m skeptical of using a high draft pick on a defensive player. Defensive performance particularly is volatile year-to-year (h/t FiveThirtyEight), so it’s possible the Eagles defense would improve enough to win more games without the offense improving. The random walk behavior means that the defense could even improve without adding defensive talent. It’s counter-intuitive to think that would be a bad outcome, but we know that offense (especially passing offense) performance is more stable year-to-year. That means a defense-driven improvement in team performance is likely to be a short-lived spike that reverts to the mean. There’s an opportunity cost in short-lived defensive improvement and that is multiple missed chances to acquire valuable high-end offensive talent.
This doesn’t mean the Eagles shouldn’t make strategic choices and smart investments on defense. While defense overall is volatile year-to-year, that isn’t true for the defensive line. PFF found that pass rush grades have a much stronger correlation year-to-year than pass coverage grades (r-squared of 0.38 vs. 0.12). A key point was that correlation isn’t the same thing as value. Team-level coverage grades and EPA allowed per play during a season had an R-squared of 0.48, compared to an R-squared of 0.05 between pass rush grades and EPA allowed. There’s a lot to unpack there, and I will.
One takeaway for me is that the back seven performance is harder to improve by investing in just one star player. Rather than stake everything on Surtain or Farley being the next Stephon Gilmore or Jalen Ramsey, it’s better to take an approach like the Buccaneers who used four picks in the first three rounds on cornerbacks the last three years. Another takeaway for me is that scheme probably does drive coverage performance; PFF contributor Eric Eager found some evidence pointing to this. Eager found that interior defensive line grades on run defense correlate strongly with light boxes, and that light boxes correlate with lower EPA allowed. Run-defense grades for these interior linemen also are stable year-to-year, just like pass rush grades. If you want to defend the pass well, invest in some run-stuffing defensive linemen to free up your back seven.
Some (rare) good news for Eagles fans is the front office and the new defensive coaches should be in synch with leaguewide trends going forward. For all his faults, Howie Roseman has long prioritized the defensive line above the back seven. Defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon previously worked under Matt Eberflus with the Indianapolis Colts, and the Colts used light boxes at the 8th-highest clip in the league last season (h/t @NFLResearch). Gannon also worked under Mike Zimmer with the Vikings; the Vikings used two-high safety looks at the 6th-highest rate last season.
Gannon isn’t likely to go quite as far as the Rams or Broncos coaches in using modern defensive tactics. But his philosophy is still likely a huge leap from that of Jim Schwartz who used light boxes at the 3rd-lowest rate and two-high safety looks at the 4th-lowest rate last season. Because of this, I’m somewhat optimistic about the defense. I don’t think the Eagles need to make a big splash there, especially in a year where top-end defensive line talent in the draft is below-average.
The more compelling rebuttal to taking a quarterback at 6 involves the idea of using the pick to upgrade another position on offense. Receiver is the one that Eagles fans crave the most. This is surely related to Roseman’s poor track-record at the position the last two drafts. The failure to acquire D.K. Metcalf, Terry McLaurin, or Justin Jefferson when opportunities to do so presented themselves stings. I understand why Chase, Smith, or even Pitts are tempting choices.
My concern is whether the Eagles’ remaining poor receiving group would hold back a player of that caliber. Another piece by Eager in PFF showed that a team’s second and third-highest-graded receiver’s grade had a stronger correlation with EPA than their highest-graded receiver’s grade. In other words, it’s more important to have depth than one star at the receiver position. Think about how the Packers—who are ultra-reliant on Davante Adams—fell short in the NFC Championship against the aforementioned Buccaneers’ defense. The Chiefs’ lack of depth behind Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce was a glaring issue against the Bucs in the Super Bowl, especially with a patchwork offensive line. Chase or Smith may not realize their full value until yet another receiver (or two) arrives in Philadelphia. Compound that with long-term uncertainty at quarterback, and that’s a long road to overhauling the offense.
I’ll admit that I struggle most with the idea of passing on an elite offensive tackle. Eager found that offensive lines are weak-link groups just like receivers are; the difference is the Eagles do have some talent on the line and would immediately benefit from shoring up the weak-link. There’s evidence that it’s more efficient to accentuate your roster’s strengths than neutralize its weaknesses. This implies there are higher returns to adding Sewell or Slater to a group with Isaac Seumalo, Jason Kelce, Brandon Brooks, and Lane Johnson than adding Chase or Smith to Jalen Reagor and Travis Fulgham. At left tackle, the organization has displayed no confidence in Andre Dillard and, while Jordan Mailata is an athletic freak, he still allowed seven(!) sacks last season. That one weakness at left tackle diminishes the value the rest of the talented line could be adding.
With that being said, I take a long-term view that pairing a young left tackle with seasoned veterans is a short-term benefit. Kelce, Brooks, and Johnson all are in their 30s and have dealt with recurring injury concerns. It’s far from certain that the high floor on the offensive line would remain high over the course of a season. Sure, I fear going too far in this “weak-link” philosophy on roster-building, as it doesn’t feel wise to simply neglect a positional weakness indefinitely. If Hurts offered Lamar Jackson-levels of certainty, I would probably advocate picking Sewell or, if he’s gone, Slater. But that certainty doesn’t exist. The many roster concerns outside of quarterback must be addressed by other means. Trading down in New England Patriots’ fashion on Day 2 and 3 to acquire more picks for several seasons seems like the ideal model for where the roster stands now. The Eagles are going to be in for a long rebuild and they’ll need to accumulate assets. That includes the most valuable asset of all: an elite, top-6 quarterback.
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