Howie Roseman takes responsibility for Marcus Smith pick and more

For the first time since 2014, former Eagles general manager Howie Roseman faced the press. After originally denying interview requests, he gave into demands. A big crowd of reporters gathered around Roseman following Doug Pederson's intro press conference on Tuesday. Roseman spoke about what he learned after losing a power struggle to former Eagles coach and de facto GM Chip Kelly.

"When this happened last year," Roseman said via NJ.com. "That is something that I took to heart. I think that goes back to what was really important to me. Building relationships was important. My thought was, 'How do I build better relationships?' I didn't put my head in the sand and just say, 'Everyone's wrong.'

"I felt that I had to look into myself and figure out a way to make people realize that I care about them while also making time to build better relationships. Sometimes, when you're in your job, when you're in a busy job, you overlook some of those things. I felt that wasn't the right thing to do. I thought that was the most important thing. I care about everyone here. They're family to me."

For the first time in too long, Roseman also stepped up to the plate and took accountability. There's often been speculation about what moves Roseman has or hasn't exactly been responsible for. One of the biggest failures of Roseman's tenure was been the Marcus Smith pick, and he specifically said he was responsible for that selection.

"I’ll take responsibility for everything that happened when I was the general manager here," Roseman said via Birds 24/7. "I’m happy to take responsibility for all that."

We had already known this to be true considering Kelly once denied he had final say on the Smith pick. This also partially explains why Smith was often buried on the bench and never really given much of an opportunity to play. Smith played the most snaps of his career during the game after Kelly got fired.

For Eagles fans, it's nice to see Roseman was genuinely reflective and held himself accountable in front of the media. But the truth is talk is cheap and moving forward it's going to be interesting to see is he can learn from his mistakes.

During Pederson's press conference, Eagles Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Lurie confirmed the Eagles will be hiring a new head of player personnel. He declined to say whether the new personnel chief will answer to Roseman or not.

"All questions of structure will be determined after the search is complete," said Lurie. "[We] can’t reveal any decision on that because it would impact our ability to find the right people we’ve designated in the search."

It's hard to believe Roseman won't have a significant say on personnel moving forward. One would think the new chief might be a puppet to Roseman like how former vice president of player personnel Ed Marynowitz was operating in the shadow of Kelly. The Eagles had a hard time attracting someone for Kelly's personnel job because it's not a real "general manager" position. They might similarly struggle to hire a strong candidate again this time around.

If the Eagles were really going to give their new personnel chief significant power, the team would have let them have some say on the head coach. Instead, Roseman was one of the three main people (along with Lurie and team president Don Smolenski) who decided to hire Pederson.

We've written at length before about how Roseman's continued presence in the Eagles front office is very troubling. That will continue to be true until we see reason to believe otherwise. The Eagles need more talent on this team and Roseman will likely have a big part in addressing that issue.

And so now the Birds are likely entrusting the guy who picked Smith and then lost his personnel job for a year to fix the team. What can go wrong?