After winning the first Super Bowl in franchise history following the 2017 season, the Philadelphia Eagles have found their way back five years later. This feat was possible thanks in large part to their ability to retain only the most essential core players, rebuild through smart drafting, and capitalize on opportunistic free-agent signings.
Howie Roseman’s work in charge of the Eagles’ roster has been particularly remarkable in how this team has been reinvented. And it has left Green Bay Packers fans understandably jealous of Philadelphia’s ability to get back over the hump for another chance at a title.
When Nick Foles, Doug Pederson, and the Philadelphia Eagles raised the Vince Lombardi Trophy in February 2018, it was hard to see that victory as the start of any sort of potential dynasty. The most crucial position was famously unsettled. The then-promising Carson Wentz had his second year cut short by an ACL tear, and Philadelphia would allow him to be the franchise quarterback once healthy. After an up-and-down 2018 season from Foles and Wentz, Roseman and the Eagles stuck with the younger player, giving Wentz a four-year, $128 million extension. Wentz had a good but not great 2019 season, leading Roseman to select Jalen Hurts in the second round of the 2020 draft as some positional insurance.
The circumstances of Philadelphia selecting Hurts and the Packers selecting Jordan Love in the 2020 draft were undoubtedly different. Still, the reaction from both fanbases was similar (that is to say, not good). The idea of Brian Gutekunst using a first-round pick on a quarterback following three consecutive trips to the NFC Championship game was (and still is) a bit of a head-scratcher, while those cheering for (and covering) the Eagles wanted more help for Wentz, either as a pass-catcher or on the offensive line.
After benching Wentz in a Week 12 game against Green Bay in 2020 (ironically), Roseman, Pederson, and Philadelphia gave Hurts four starts to see what he could do. Conversely, the Packers never presented Love with any sort of extended opportunity to audition for the job. Fueled by his personal vendetta against the Love pick, Aaron Rodgers earned back-to-back MVPs in the 2020 and 2021 seasons. If Love and Hurts had ended up on opposite teams, there’s certainly a scenario where Love is in the Super Bowl right now while Hurts is stuck on the bench in limbo behind Rodgers.
What Roseman did, and should get the most credit for, is cutting bait on his mistake (Wentz’s extension) while still getting exceptional value in return. If Wentz brought back a first-round and third-round pick in the draft, how much would Rodgers have gone for? Obviously, way more. But moving on from Rodgers would have been (and still remains to be) a much more difficult decision.
With Hurts in place, Roseman made another tough decision to part ways with his head coach only three years after winning a Super Bowl. The Packers parallel here would be holding on to Mike McCarthy for perhaps a season or two too long, clinging to the Lombardi Trophy-clouded haze of what the Super Bowl season and subsequent 15-1 campaign looked like. The decision for Pederson to leave Philadelphia was mutual. Nick Sirianni immediately put his stamp on the team, leading them to the brink of a title in only two seasons.
This year, Philadelphia’s Super Bowl roster features only seven holdovers from the team that won the title in 2018, most notably Jason Kelce and Lane Johnson on the offensive line and Fletcher Cox and Brandon Graham on the defensive line. Replacing 46 other positions over five years is quite the roster churn.
Meanwhile, the core of the Packers from the 2018 team that went 6-9-1 is still largely intact, with 11 players still on the 2022 roster: Aaron Rodgers, Aaron Jones, David Bakhtiari, Dean Lowry, Kenny Clark, Jaire Alexander, Randall Cobb, Marcedes Lewis, Allen Lazard, Robert Tonyan, and Mason Crosby.
Those players have several characteristics in common, ranging from expensive (Rodgers, Bakhtiari, Jones, Clark, Alexander) to close personal friends with the starting quarterback (Bakhtiari again, Cobb, Tonyan, Lazard). Restructuring these contracts has famously hamstrung the Packers financially this season and beyond.
On the other hand, Philadelphia hasn’t had to play the same games as Gutekunst and Green Bay and has had much more flexibility to pounce on opportunities. Take just this past offseason alone for the Eagles, where they signed cornerback James Bradberry to a one-year deal, traded for A.J. Brown and signed him to a four-year megadeal extension, and signed and extended Haason Reddick. The common thread amongst those three moves? They all ended up earning second-team All-Pro honors.
A common retort from former Packers executive (and Twitter must-follow) Andrew Brandt is that they don’t sign many street free agents because they’re concerned with re-signing their own players to extensions. While that’s true, there’s been a lot of loyalty going around Lambeau Field, with extensions being given to players and positions that might not have received them had they been coming from another team.
The point here is that when the Eagles were presented opportunities to make tough decisions, they did the opposite of what the Packers did in similar (but admittedly non-identical) situations in an attempt to get back to the Super Bowl. However, moving on from the two most important roles in an NFL franchise — starting quarterback and head coach — are not easy decisions when a team is winning.
There’s no surefire recipe for making it to the Super Bowl. But in the 12 seasons since Green Bay was last there, it feels like they keep taking the same approach for similarly disappointing results. The Philadelphia Eagles’ ability to completely reinvent themselves over five short seasons is something Packers fans should be not only envious of but also hopeful for whatever a post-Aaron Rodgers world looks like in Green Bay.
