In a league that is constantly looking for parity, how do you remain at the top of the NFL food chain? One word – relentlessness. You hunt relentlessly with a hyperaggressive game plan. And you don’t stop hunting. Ever. You canât hit home runs unless you take some big swings. Itâs that simple. You want to choke up on the bat, you can spray the field with some slap singles but youâre probably never going to lead the league in RBIâs.  Â
Thereâs a reason why the two teams about to meet in Super Bowl 59, the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs will have played in a combined eight Super Bowls in the last eight years. They both have hyper aggressive front offices that take big cuts and can hit for average as well as power. They also can pivot and find success in different ways. Â
The Eagles are constantly adapting, upgrading and taking shots down field. Three Super Bowl appearances in 8 years is very impressive. There are currently just three players remaining from the 2017-2018 championship team who will be playing in Sundayâs game, that is if Brandon Graham is activated.
From the 2022 team that lost in the big game to the Kansas City Chiefs the Eagles have 12 new starters. Their coordinators are four coordinators removed from that team and despite paying their thoroughbred wide outs each $25 and $32 million per year and a quarterback who landed a $250 million dollar extension two off-seasons ago, the Birds still found the money and had the foresight to land one of the great free-agent signings of all time in running back Saquon Barkley.
Big Red And Big Brett Make A Good Team
The Kansas City Chiefs have been just as aggressive and their three Super Bowl Titles in the last four seasons reflect that. The first thing they did was pivot off of their quarterback Alex Smith who was the first pick overall in the 2005 draft by the San Francisco 49ers but then traded to the Chiefs for a 2nd round pick in 2013. But after five seasons both K.C. Co-Director of Personnel Brett Veach, who was a coaching intern for Andy Reid once upon a time with the Eagles, and Reid recognized that Smith could only take Kansas City so far in the postseason so they decided to move on and attempt to upgrade the QB position. Chiefs General Manger at the time, John Dorsey, signed off on the big move on draft day 2017 as all involved were concerned that the Cleveland Browns were going to take a relatively unknown quarterback from Texas Tech named Patrick Mahomes at pick number 12. So on draft day the Chiefs traded up 17 spots with the Buffalo Bills in the first round of the 2017 NFL Draft to land Mahomes at pick number 10 by swapping their pick at 27, a third-round pick, and their first-round pick in 2018.
In his first year as a starter Mahomes threw 50 touchdown passes and led KC to the AFC Title Game. It was the first of seven straight Conference championship games and counting that Mahomes had led his team to. To say Mahomes was a home run might be the understatement of the century.
With #15 in charge, the Chiefs have won three of the last four Super Bowls and still find ways to improve their roster every year. The first of which, back in the 2020 season was won with explosiveness and a deadly vertical game in the form of Tyreke Hill. But Hill was traded to the Dolphins the following off-season and Kansa City then pivoted into more of a methodical offense while building an elite defense.
In the 2022 draft the Chiefs traded their 29th, 94th, and 121st picks to the New England Patriots in exchange for the 21st pick and drafted cornerback Trent McDuffie, who is arguably one of the best cornerbacks in the league to sure up their back end. McDuffie was a home run.
Then, after winning their third Super Bowl in four seasons,  Kansas City traded up to select the fastest man alive, in Texasâ wide receiver Xavier Worthy in the 2024 NFL Draft. Once again the Chiefs traded with the Bills to move up to the 28th overall pick to select Worthy. (I donât know maybe itâs me but since Buffalo is 0-4 against the Chiefs in the postseason in the Mahomes era I would think at some point the Bills organization should stop doing business with their arch-nemesis on draft day. Just a thought.).
Credit current Chiefs General Manager Brett Veach and head coach Andy Reid for their ability to construct a team built for historic accomplishments. Keep in mind when the Chiefs hired Andy Reid about 9 seconds after the Eagles let him go back in 2013, he was heading to a franchise that won just two games the year before he got there.
Let The Big Howie Hunt
Then thereâs Homerun Howie. If the Eagles G.M. ever decided to retire from football he could easily land a gig with the Phillies somewhere near the top of their lineup fitting in nicely with their non-discerning âswing hard, you might hit somethingâ philosophy.
Mind you Roseman doesnât always hit home runs, nobody does, but what he does do is move off of mistakes before they become too big to bounce back from in an acceptable period of time. But when he does get good wood on the ball they usually become nice souvenirs.
At some point the light bulb went off and Roseman realized how badly his team needed the right franchise quarterback to compete with the big boys so in 2016 he went through great lengths to move up from 13 to 8 to 2 to be able to draft on of the two of the two most heralded college quarterbacks to enter the NFL in a while, Jared Goff and Carson Wentz. Since the Rams went first that year and selected Goff, Roseman selected Wentz with the 2nd overall pick that year. He also had just hired a head coach with no head coaching experience because future hall of fame head coach, Andy Reid, whom Roseman fired four years earlier convinced him to.  Doug Pederson was now at the helm and in his wake was the former oracle of Oregon, Chip Kelly who enjoyed almost three years with the Birds recording back-back 10 win seasons and a first year playoff appearance before flaming out in embarrassing fashion in game 15 of year three. Â
After marrying the first time head coach with the first time professional quarterback the team had an up and down first year finishing the season at 7-9. But something happened that off-season that may not ever happen again. Howie hit on virtually every free agent move he made and bolstered his team with smart, bountiful trades before and during the 2017-18 season. He also invested in a backup quarterback who turned out be the clutchest of the clutch quarterbacks in Never Nervous Nick Foles. Nineteen games and one parade later Roseman and his Eagles had their first Super Bowl Championship.
Roseman, like most others usually do, tried to run it back the following year and came within an Alshon Jeffrey drop from landing another berth in the NFC Title game. But the success the Eagles had that year was mostly due to their late stretch, âNever Nervous Nicky to the rescueâ once again. The rest of the team just didnât look or play like they had the year before, namely Wentz who the Birds shut down after suffering a back injury with three games left in the regular season.
Just two seasons later after finishing at 4-11-1, Roseman had seen enough and decided to leave the sentiments of his first Super Bowl team in the rear view window. The only thing that was left behind was one Lombardi trophy and a statue of his former head coach and back-up quarterback discussing a trick play that was used in the Super Bowl, very ceremoniously and quite âcleverlyâ named, The Philly Special. The play gets an A for execution and an F- for name unoriginality. It sounds like the intern, still trying to grasp the shortie process at the local Wawa, came up with it before his daily gummy infusion. Oh and since someone has to keep Eagles Nation accountable week in and week out just remember, it was the backup quarterback who called the play. The head coach just signed off on it, so letâs please give credit where itâs due. The Super Bowl was won with a forced two quarterback system. One was the league MVP had he not gotten hurt in week 13 and the other was the actual Super Bowl MVP.
I should mention that in June of 2019 the Eagles backed up the truck for Wentz, giving him a four year extension worth $128 million, and up to $144 million, with $66 million fully guaranteed at signing and $107.9 million guarantees.
While the Birds were actually paying Wentz $31,999,999.90 per year for his arm, the extra 10 cents was what they paid for his head. Whether it was his ego or his understudyâs success, or the statue of his understudy, Wentz fizzled in spectacular fashion âleadingâ his team to a 3-8-1 record before getting benched during a week 12 loss in Green Bay in his final year in Philly. I should also mention that while Wentz was faltering Roseman stunned the football world by drafting another quarterback in the second round of the 2020 draft named Jalen Hurts. When Wentz got benched late in the 2020 season, Hurts stepped in and won his very first start against a much better Saints team in New Orleans.
Roseman traded Wentz to the Colts after a 4-11-1 season in 2020 for a 2021-third-round pick and a conditional 2022 second-rounder. The 2022 conditional second-round pick became a first-rounder after Wentz played over 75% of the plays in the 2020 season with Indy.
The Birds pivoted off of a quarterback who was once thought to be the franchiseâs savior. The Eagles took a $33.8 million dead-cap hit when they traded Wentz to the Colts, at the time it was the largest dead-cap hit in NFL history.
 Roseman also took a major hit by his peers for the disaster the Eagles had become just four years removed from a Super Bowl championship. But the criticism didnât deter Howie. He quickly gathered himself and hired a new coaching infrastructure laced with unknown 30 and 40-somethingâs led by a 39 year old unknown one-year offensive coordinator from the Colts named Nick Sirianni.
After a turbulent 9-8 season in 2021 that ended in a playoff blowout loss to Tom Brady and the eventual Super Bowl Champion Tampa Bay Bucs, Roseman’s team came out firing on all cylinders and finished the following season in the actual Super Bowl, losing a three point heartbreaker to the Chiefs.Â
Been Here, Done That
The 2023 ended in a catastrophic collapse for the ages. But Roseman didn’t panic. He brought in two new coordinators and kept Captain Sirianni while zagging on the running back market in signing Saquon Barkley and also drafting very well for the fourth straight season while identifying untapped talent in free agents like Zack Baun, who went from a not very special teams player in New Orleans to a first team all-pro linebacker with the Birds. And just two years after that devastating loss to the Chiefs in Super Bowl 57, they Birds are back in show and putting for dough.
Trading Carson Wentz was a move that altered the Philadelphia Eagles franchise, putting the organization in flux as the team moved on from one of their key components of their Super Bowl 52 championship roster. Parting with a franchise quarterback is never easy, unless your franchise quarterback regresses every season and can’t stay on the field due to a multitude on injuries. While having a hand in bringing the city of Philadelphia its first and only Super Bowl title, Wentz was exiled after just five seasons leaving behind a postseason legacy of one completion for three yards. Yes, you read that right. Tomorrow we’ll get into the anatomy of the Wentz trade and exactly what Roseman did to resurrect his team with amazing expeditiousness, while building it for the long haul.
Ego is the one sure way to ruin any relationship. Itâs also the one sure way to ruin a football franchise. Roseman is a killer who has no conscience when it comes to fleecing his colleagues. Iâm sure he has a healthy ego but he doesnât let it get in the way of his goal, the team goal and the ultimate goal. And the way his team is constructed, Howie’s hunt for hardware might just be getting started.Â
For More On Super Bowl 59 Watch One Of My Podcasts With Partner Sean Lochner And Special Guest Marcus Hayes Who is in New Orleans Covering The Game For The Philadelphia Inquirer
Like Heavy Sports’s content? Be sure to follow us.
This article was originally published on Heavy Sports
The post Homerun Howie’s Hunt for Hardware Might Just Be Getting Started in Philly appeared first on Heavy Sports.