Ten Takeaways from the Eagles’ 2024 NFL Draft Class

The draft is over and I sense that Eagles fans are mostly satisfied with the job that Howie Roseman and company did this year. 10 observations:

1) A few years ago, we all asked ourselves a simple question. Why don’t the Eagles draft the best players from the best conference? There were jokes about Howie Roseman ignoring the All-SEC player right in front of him and going for some random PAC 12 guy instead.

That led to capitulation, and a wave of draft picks that included DeVonta Smith, Landon Dickerson, Jordan Davis, Nakobe Dean, Jalen Carter, Nolan Smith, and even Jalen Hurts, who played more SEC football than Big 12 football. Four of the seven were slam dunks, though the jury is still out on a handful of the UGA guys drafted in the last two years.

That said, it was interesting to see Howie switch things up this year. He drafted a first round corner from Toledo, traded up for an Iowa DB, and then took a project EDGE who started at Cornell before making his way to Houston Christian in the Southland Conference.

That’s not to say they’re the wrong picks. Quinyon Mitchell was the consensus top corner on the board, and Cooper DeJean a first round talent. Maybe it signals an end to the “we’re just gonna draft the best UGA and Bama players” wave, though Roseman noted in his Friday press conference that “these were kind of two extenuating circumstances because of the particular guys… probably wouldn’t say it’s going to be a trend.”

2) Why did Mitchell stay at Toledo for his entire career? He was clearly a Power 5 talent and could have transferred:

“…just coming out of high school I had some grade issues and stuff like that, and Toledo just stuck with me through the whole process. Gave me a fair chance to play ball when nobody else wanted to.

So when the time came around, it was a no-brainer. I wasn’t going anywhere, I wasn’t leaving, no matter how much money or who came to offer. That’s why I went to Toledo and that’s why I stayed.”

All good. He stuck with the team that gave him a chance. And high school grades are meaningless now. He’s here to break up passes and take interceptions to the house. He’s not here to study engineering.

3) Jalyx Hunt played absolutely nobody in college. Here’s the schedule from HCU’s 2023 season:

The Southland Conference stinks and so does the Ivy League.

Does it matter? Well, hopefully not. Brian Westbrook came out of Nova and Hugh Douglas Central State, and it worked out alright for them at the NFL level.

Said Roseman of Hunt:

“He’s got freaky tools in his body. He’s an explosive guy. If you watch his best plays, he’s doing things that are unique. He can bend. He can close. He can finish. He’s long. He’s an extremely smart kid obviously coming from Cornell.

You know, we feel like we got a good edge rush group. He doesn’t have to come in here – we’re going to develop him like we talk about.

This is a perfect developmental guy for us because of the tools in his body and his character and work ethic, and we think we can really find something with him. That’s on us. That’s on how he’s going to work.”

Howie says these guys are “hard to find,” but in my mind calling a third round draft pick a “developmental guy” feels like a bit of an oxymoron. It feels like Davion Taylor part two. The Eagles sometimes become enamored with the tools that a guy has, the upside, the potential, and end up reaching 20-30 picks early in a “we’re smarter than you” type of move. You’ve got the entirety of the 5th, 6th, and 7th rounds to find those project players, so using a late third on a guy like this feels a little ‘meh.’ Let’s hope we’re wrong.

4) This video alone makes Trevor Keegan the right fit:

Michigan offensive lineman Trevor Keegan cracked a beer with his teeth, then chugged it.

He was shirtless during U-M’s national championship parade pic.twitter.com/aPkLYrjFEE

— WXYZ Detroit (@wxyzdetroit) January 13, 2024

5) For the same reason, intangibles, Jeremiah Trotter Jr. had to be a Philadelphia Eagle. He was projected by most experts to go in the fourth round, so he didn’t drop too far to the middle of the fifth, where the Birds grabbed him.

Is he undersized? Yeah, sure. Does he get swallowed up by blockers sometimes? Yeah. But if he has even 75% of the heart and desire and drive that his dad possessed, he’ll succeed here. Sometimes you have to bank on those things that can’t be quantified and hope your concerns with size, strength, and film end up not mattering. You hope that the concept of following in his dad’s footsteps stirs that innate motivation and responsibility. It’s not something that could be replicated if he went somewhere else, right? If the Seahawks took Trot, are they getting that bit of “extra” out of him? I’m not so sure. But playing here, where his dad played? That checks the right box.

6) With Trotter going in the 5th, the trend of avoiding early-round linebackers continues. They haven’t taken a 1st or 2nd round linebacker since Mychal Kendricks in 2012, unless you wanna count Marcus Smith and Nolan Smith, who really are hybrid EDGE players that sometimes get listed as OLB. Davion Taylor, Nakobe Dean, and Jordan Hicks were all third rounders.

7) It can be really annoying to sit there waiting for an Eagles pick, only for Howie to trade 14 times in a row and you’re sitting there trying to figure out when the Birds are back on the clock. But you want that kind of guy running your team, a guy who is going to aggressively pursue players they like (DeJean), and trade back to accrue assets if they think the board is gonna play out favorably. He’s never just sitting there. He’s always active, always scanning, always working and running through scenarios. They don’t always get the picks right, but it’s not for a lack of preparation and awareness.

Howie explained the philosophy:

“I think when you start a day like (Saturday) and you have as many picks as we do, you go into it and say, ‘Hey, what would be a great goal?’ It would be to get as many of the guys that we’ve targeted on day three as we possibly can and at the same time see if we can try to accumulate picks for the future.

We were a little light for next year’s draft going into day three today, and so I think that was a little bit of a focus in the trade talks. Sometimes you’re in trade talks and kind of going, ‘Hey, I’ll take a pick in this year’s draft.’ So in those talks more focused (Saturday) in particular about instead of a this year pick, we’ll take a next year pick just because we wanted to get back some of the picks that we had gotten rid of next year.

We felt like we had an opportunity with the amount of picks we had (Saturday) to get a lot of players that we liked, and we were also excited about the draft process. It will be a little bit different draft class next year because of the amount of guys that are coming out next year. That was kind of in the back of our mind.”

8) College programs were not knocking down the door to sign Cooper DeJean, who wanted to play quarterback:

Q.If I can take you back to high school and when you had to make the decision about whether to go — am I right that it was Iowa or South Dakota State at the end? One was to play quarterback and the other was to play defensive back?(Jeff McLane)

COOPER DeJEAN: Yeah, South Dakota State, North Dakota State, both those schools. Iowa. I really wanted to play quarterback, but ultimately Iowa was my dream school growing up. That’s where I wanted to be.

Grew up going to games in Kinnick stadium. Obviously always had a great defense. Great defensive coordinator who is also the defensive backs coach who taught me a lot about the game.

I couldn’t be happier with my decision to go there and it’s helped me get to this point. It will continue to help me throughout my NFL career.

Yeah, the rest is history. He’s coming off a leg injury but says he’s ready to go and feels fine. The biggest thing is going to be the Eagles deciding where to play him in the secondary.

Cooper DeJean with the most madden ass interception I’ve ever seen. Casual no look over the shoulder pick 6 he never should have been able to return #Eagles pic.twitter.com/I5GODDtf2q

— C4 (@PAPAxC4) April 27, 2024

9) The Eagles needed a whole lot of help in the defensive backfield, so no issue with drafting two cornerbacks in a row. DeJean might not even play on the outside. He might play in the slot, play some safety, float around a bit in year one. You could make an argument that they should have gone EDGE or LB in the second round, perhaps try to add at all three levels of the defense, but the bigger takeaway is that they used their first three picks to help that side of the ball, which needed reinforcement badly.

10) WR3 was a position of need going into the draft. For everything the Eagles have in A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, and Dallas Goedert, the guy in the Quez Watkins position is probably getting 25-35 targets. Last year, it was split up about 20 each between Quez, Olamide Zaccheaus, and Julio Jones, and while Saquon Barkley is going to command a larger slice of the pie (presumably), Ainias Smith and Johnny Wilson are going to get a chance to come in and compete for that WR3 job in camp.

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