Why Howie Roseman will never budge on re-signing players during the season

By Reuben Frank • Published February 27, 2026

It started out modestly, soon after Howie Roseman returned to power after his one-year GM exile in 2015 while Chip Kelly pretended to be a general manager.

On Nov. 17, 2016, Roseman signed Chris Maragos to a three-year, $6 million extension and a day later did three-year deals for specialists Jon Dorenbos and Donnie Jones, Dorenbos for $3.4 million and Jones for $5 ½ million. 

Then it got serious.

On Dec. 2, 2017, Eagles gave Alshon Jeffery a four-year, $52 million extension, and on Nov. 11, 2019, Roseman signed Brandon Brooks to a four-year, $56.35 million extension. 

And on Nov. 19, 2021, he signed Dallas Goedert to a four-year, $57 million deal and two days later inked Avonte Maddox to a three-year, $22.5 million extension.

Every year, about midway through the season, you’d wonder who was getting the bag next.

Those mid-year deals helped the Eagles sign players well before free agency while they were still the only team that could negotiate with them.

Then it all stopped.

Roseman hasn’t signed a player to a mid-season extension since Goedert in 2021, and he said last week that policy will not change.

There’s a risk because the more players who hit free agency, the less the Eagles chances are to keep them.

But it’s a risk Roseman insists on taking.

"I think it's the right thing to do,” he said in his wide-ranging interview last Friday at the Jefferson Health Training Complex. "I think that once you start playing what will be perceived as favorites, you have the risk of making people, no matter how good their character is, of making them independent contractors and starting to think about their own future as opposed to the team.

"And if that, at the end of the day, costs us a little bit, I'll do anything to win another Super Bowl. And so, I think from my perspective, if that lessens our chance of winning the Super Bowl by 1 percent or 2 percent, I'd have a lot more regret about that than I would about maybe having to get tighter going forward.”

In Roseman’s eyes, hand-picking which veterans to sign to extensions can fracture a locker room because the players who don’t get the deals could develop bitterness toward the front office or even their teammates.

And that’s the last thing Roseman wants in the locker room.

"It's funny, I hear this all the time in sports,” he said. "I'll be watching a basketball game or I'll be watching a baseball game - I don't watch a lot of hockey. I could, but I don't watch a lot of hockey. But I'm sure it's the same in hockey. And it's like, ‘If they just win a championship, it'll be all worth it, and they can blow the team up.’ None of those commentators are from Philly.

"But I think that from my perspective, to win a championship is so special. It means so much to so many people that if you have to make some sacrifices in the long run to do something that is historical and life-changing for so many people, I'll never have regrets on that. 

"Now, what we do after that is obviously important. It doesn't mean like we go win a championship and we're good, you know, we're on scholarship. 

"But I think that from my perspective, being around our players, being around our team, the minute you start doing it in the middle of the year, and we've done it in the past, you get calls (from agents):  ‘What about my guy? What about my guy? Do you not like my guy? Is he going to be a free agent?’ 

"And when you have this whisper club, which we all do, we have this as front-office people, we have this as players, we have this as coaches, and they go, ‘Well, they must not like you, they decided to sign this guy over that guy.’ And you could say whatever you want. But for all of us, our actions speak louder than words. 

"And so once you start doing that, there is a dynamic that I don't think is the most conducive to having the confetti fall on your head.”

https://www.nbcsportsphiladelphia.com/nfl/philadelphia-eagles/why-howie-roseman-will-never-budge-on-re-signing-players-during-the-season/717942/