Roles for free agents and more in 13 leftovers from NFL owners meetings

Roles for free agents and more in 13 leftovers from NFL owners meetings

 

It was a jam-packed few days down in Palm Beach, Florida, for the annual NFL owners meetings.

After COVID put the pause on the in-person event the last couple years, it was great to be back in an oddly familiar setting — completely out of place in a luxurious resort. The few days at The Breakers were productive and it’s a rare occasion to speak with Jeffrey Lurie, Howie Roseman and Nick Sirianni within a 48-hour span.

There was plenty of coverage throughout the week, from Lurie’s involvement on personnel decisions to Roseman’s longevity to Jalen Hurts’ potential to the return of kelly green jerseys.

But here are some leftovers from my stay in South Florida:

1. The Eagles’ biggest splash signing in free agency was bringing in pass rusher Haason Reddick on a three-year, $45 million deal. While Reddick has held a press conference since that signing, this was the first chance to talk to anyone in the organization about the move.

Sirianni cited competitive advantage as he sort of side-stepped a question about how the Eagles plan on using Reddick in the upcoming season, but stated the obvious: Reddick’s job will be to get after quarterbacks.

"We obviously have many plans — obviously you wouldn’t sign a guy to that kind of contract unless we had major plans for him — but I think at this particular time, that’s to our advantage of (knowing) how we’re going to use him,” Sirianni said.

"Obviously, you pay a guy like that to rush the passer. That will definitely be a big part of our plan for him. That’s what he gets paid to do and that’s a need that we have, that we want him to help fill that role with the rest of the defensive ends that we have on our football team.”

The Eagles are calling Reddick a linebacker but he’ll mostly fill the SAM position in Jonathan Gannon’s defense. That explains why Sirianni referred to Reddick as a defensive end, but his official position is linebacker.

The SAM position was in his scheme last year but was filled by Genard Avery. It’s hard to imagine the position looking the same this year with a very different (and better) player.

2. The only outside signing on offense this offseason has been wide receiver Zach Pascal, who has been a favorite of Sirianni’s for many years. It was Sirianni who helped Pascal develop from an undrafted player into a receiver who had back-to-back 600+ yard seasons in Indy.

I got the chance to ask Colts head coach Frank Reich just what the Eagles are getting in Pascal.

"Just a tough, gritty player who will block for us, in the run game he’s going to make his presence known. It’s going to be infectious on the team,” Reich said. "The other receivers will respond to that because he’s so good at it. And he’s earned the right to become a playmaker on the field. He’s a really nifty route runner and has proven that time and time again. Has been really good in the red zone for us. Really good all over. He and Nick. Nick used to joke that he was going to name his son after him. They were that close. I’m happy. It’s kind of cool that they get to be reunited.”

3. The one answer from Sirianni’s press conference on Tuesday that really didn’t go well was when he talked about Derek Barnett, whom the Eagles brought back on a two-year deal as a free agent.

Here’s what he said about Barnett:

"Derek Barnett is everything that embodies what we want in the characteristics of a player. He’s tough, he’s competitive, he’s got high football IQ, he’s got high character, he loves football. Man, I love Derek Barnett. I love the type of player and person that he is. We just felt like they fit what we want, not only as a player but as a person and as a teammate and I’m excited to get those guys back in the roles they’re going to play this year on our team.”

Sirianni is a players coach and he defended his player. And, for the most part, a lot of the things he said about Barnett are true. The one area that’s a tough sell is the high football IQ. Barnett has committed 25 penalties in his career and 10 of them have been personal fouls. So it’s kinda tough to argue that he has a high football IQ.

But the rest of what Sirianni said it a pretty accurate assessment of how the team feels so differently about Barnett than the fanbase. Barnett is back on a pretty cheap deal as a rotational player and in that role, he should be fine.

4. Sirianni was asked if other teams have been showing interest in backup quarterback Gardner Minshew and declined to answer.

"All I can say is I value Gardner Minshew very much,” Sirianni said. "He helped us make the playoffs last year, with him being able to step in when Jalen was dinged and play a very good game against the Jets. That just adds value to him and that adds for 31 other teams, but it also adds value for us as well, knowing that you need good quality backups. And I’m sure glad that he is our backup on our football team, and I look forward to continuing to work with him.”

As far as backups go, Minshew is a pretty good one. He obviously has a desire to be a starting quarterback and he even took a trip to Sirianni’s office during last season to see if there was any way he could take the job from Hurts. But his desire to play isn’t a reason for the Eagles to trade him, not even in the final year of his contract.

Because in 2022, the Eagles will happily keep Minshew as their backup for his reasonable $2.54 million cap hit unless another team steps up and offers them what they consider to be a reasonable offer. He’s not getting traded for another late Day 3 pick.

5. Sirianni again spoke about the way he and offensive coordinator Shane Steichen called the offensive plays together in 2021. We really learned about this process late in the season when Sirianni nearly missed a game because of COVID. He explained in December how the process worked.

That was the how. But on Tuesday, he explained why.

"I just had so much trust in Shane and the way that he thinks about offense,” Sirianni said. "We think about offense similarly. It's just a big benefit.”

Sirianni talked about the benefits of having Steichen in a prominent role as co-play caller, saying it freed him up for more head coaching duties. He could go and speak to his defense or special teams players. Sirianni even brought up seeing Super Bowl-winning head coach Sean McVay on the sideline talking to his defensive players.

It can sometimes be difficult for a young head coach to prioritize his side of the ball. There’s sometimes a learning curve as they learn how to be in charge of an entire team. It’s clear that Sirianni used his play-calling system as a way to help him there.

6. I really couldn’t believe how much Colts owner Jim Irsay bashed Carson Wentz. He went overboard.

Maybe Irsay felt the need to say all that to justify his team’s decision to trade away Wentz just a year after giving up an eventual first-round pick for him. But it was brutally honest. It was strange hearing an NFL owner speak so negatively of a player. Lurie took the high road talking about Wentz, but he also made it known that he was taking the high road.

"I welcome Carson when he comes back,” Lurie said. "I’d rather take the road of he really helped us in a very important way in the 2017 season.”

It felt like Lurie wanted to say more. Maybe he saw Irsay’s comments earlier in the day and didn’t want to do the same.

7. The Eagles took aim at some wide receivers in free agency and ended up with Zach Pascal, who is a nice player but not exactly one of the top guys fans were hoping to get. With that in mind, Roseman said something noteworthy about the Eagles’ young offensive weapons on Monday.

He talked about how DeVonta Smith had 104 targets, Dallas Goedert had 76 and Quez Watkins had 62 in 2021 and how he thinks all three could demand even more going forward.

"We believe in those three guys, specifically the first two guys, they’re going to require, as their skillset gets better and better and as they get more comfortable in the offense, they’re going to require more targets,” he said. "So I think as we look at it, we’re saying, ‘Can we also satisfy a lot of players who are going to gobble up a lot of targets while we’re trying to satisfy these young players that we think can be exceptional players in this league.’ I think, for us, we’re looking at how do we get these guys involved more? How do we get these guys more targets? And where does that leave everyone else after that?”

Roseman said some top receivers get 150 targets and some top tight ends get 120 and he’s right. The top 10 receivers in the league last season (in yards) averaged just over 153 targets and the top 4 tight ends (Goedert was fifth in the NFL in receiving yards among tight ends) averaged just under 123 targets.

While all that is true, it doesn’t mean the Eagles couldn’t have used another top target. With free agency ongoing and with plenty of picks in next month’s draft, the Eagles still need to add.

8. Lurie had an Oscars party at his Palm Beach mansion on Sunday night and got to watch as his film "Summer of Soul” won an Academy Award. But you know what happened on Sunday night. As Chris Rock was up there to present the winner of the category, the infamous Will Smith slap happened. So Lurie and his partygoers were just sitting there in disbelief as they waited to celebrate.

"Ironically, Chris Rock is in the movie,” Lurie said. "He was in the audience 50 years ago. If you watch the movie closely, there's a close-up of a young boy, probably in his teens. So a teenage boy that happened to be a close-up from the footage from 50 years ago, and it's obviously Chris. Then they picked him to present that award.”

9. The two rules the Eagles co-proposed passed this year, including a rule to change overtime in the playoffs. The new rule gives a chance for both teams to have possession.

"In what sport is a coin flip that important? It's become super important in the NFL,” Lurie said. "This was an effort to make it so that it's not as important to win the coin flip.”

10. I caught a pretty funny moment in the hallway of The Breakers when Andy Reid spotted his former assistant and branch of his coaching tree Ron Rivera wearing a Hawaiian shirt, a staple of the Reid wardrobe. Rivera happily showed it off to Big Red.

"That’s a good look,” Reid said with a smile.

11. For years, I would go to the owners meetings and track the progress of the kelly green alternate jerseys. So it’s pretty cool that they’re actually happening in 2023.

Why the extra year? Well, the Eagles are working with Nike on perfecting the color. Apparently, Nike is using a new material and they don’t have kelly green in their palette yet for that material. Lurie said it’s a two-year process to perfect it. The example given was how sometimes paint will look different on a wall than it does in a bucket. The Eagles want to make sure these jerseys look right under stadium lighting.

12. Now the head coach of the Jaguars, Doug Pederson definitely seems refreshed as he returns to the NFL after a year off in 2021 after he was fired by the Eagles. As Sirianni enters his second year as Eagles coach, you might remember what happened in Pederson’s second year as Eagles coach: The won the Super Bowl.

Pederson was asked on Monday what led to that jump in Year 2.

"I think looking back  from ’16 to ’17, one, the coaching staff stayed the same,” Pederson said. "Keeping the same coaches, even though guys had a chance to leave, I wanted to make sure I had the same guys around our players. Again, keeping our core guys intact. We had a young quarterback coming into his second year where we could grow even more with him and then start putting pieces around him to be successful.

"And then the same thing on the defensive side of the ball. We had some veteran guys over there, some leaders over there. We brought guys like Chris Long in, guys like that who could really add that leadership on defense and really kind of bring that whole thing together. I think that’s kind of what catapulted us into ’17, ’18, the kind of runs we had back then.”

There are some parallels as the Eagles enter Year 2 under Sirianni. The coaching staff has remained intact, Hurts is entering his second year as the full-time stater and some of those same veterans are still leading the team.

13. Roseman this week admitted the Eagles are not in a "go-for-it situation” or an "all-in situation.” Make no mistake, the Eagles are trying to win football games in 2022. But they’re not in a position like the Rams or the Chargers, where they’re willing to sacrifice their futures to really go for it.

Lurie is obviously on board with this philosophy.

"Last year was kind of a transition year,” Lurie said. "I think right now we're at a point where we build for the present and build for the future. And that's what smart management does. You balance both. And you don't want to sacrifice the future. But you also want to maximize the present.”

https://www.nbcsports.com/philadelphia/eagles/nfl-owners-meetings-13-leftover-eagles-notes-palm-beach