Howie Roseman discusses the Eagles’ 2023 NFL Draft

That’s a wrap!

The 2023 NFL Draft has come and gone and the Philadelphia Eagles are definitely among the winning teams. GM Howie Roseman and head coach Nick Sirianni spoke to reporters one more time on Saturday evening to put a bow on everything they had done this weekend.

Here’s what the pair had to say:

On the RB position and D’Andre Swift

HOWIE ROSEMAN: “I feel like, it starts with the O-line. Obviously for us, that’s where it starts. We have a tremendous O-line, we have tremendous coaches when they put the game plan together, giving our runners a chance. And then the guys we’ve had, have been successful. They’re talented guys who have been successful.

So, I’m really excited about the opportunity to get [D’Andre] Swift, bring him back to Philly. He’s a guy we’ve known for a long time, even when he was in high school, we were watching him. We knew what kind of player he was, watched him through college, and really excited for that opportunity here.”

Howie explained that when the Lions took Jahmyr Gibbs at No. 12, they started thinking there might be an opportunity to make this happen. The GM echoed what he told ESPN earlier in the day, that heading into the draft, they felt good about their running back room and weren’t looking at it as a position of need.

NICK SIRIANNI: “We really are happy with our running back room, this is just another great piece to add. But, you can definitely see his ability to make people miss in space, and you saw that against our defense last year, right? He had some unbelievable runs against us last year, where you look at each other like, that guy’s hard to tackle. So, he has the ability to make you miss and also accelerate through the hole, which will serve us well in some of the draws that we run, some of the RPOs that we run.”

Sirianni went on to point out some of the things that Swift can do catching the ball, are things that they’ve done with guys in the past. Swift knows how to read defenses out of the backfield to make guys separate from tight coverage and he has good hands.

On trading into the fourth round

HOWIE ROSEMAN: “[Kelee] Ringo was a guy that stuck out on our board. He had a really high grade. He was the guy that we were considering at those picks when we picked in the third round. And then we go through it.”

They look at things like the grade on the player, and then think about a year from now and how the pick they’re giving up might affect them. Howie said that they had a higher grade on Ringo than the pick they traded. The GM also noted that Ringo is just 20 years old, and they have a great opportunity to develop him behind some really great veterans at that position.

There were reports after the Eagles made the pick that part of Ringo’s fall was due to a shoulder injury and his work ethic, but Howie was emphatic that they don’t have any concerns, and they don’t have any questions about his medical.

On taking so many guys from Georgia

HOWIE ROSEMAN: “We try to investigate with as many people as possible, to get as much information as possible, and that’s what we did here with all these Georgia guys. Certainly — I know the jokes about Georgia, they’re coming, and maybe they have been there, but for us, it’s about individual players, and if we were going to bypass a player just because we had taken another player from that school, that would be silly too.”

Other notables

• On taking Tanner McKee, Howie talked about how they always say it starts with the OL, DL and quarterback, and it’s always a position to which they’re looking to add talent. The GM was sure to say that the draft pick was no indication of how they felt about Marcus Mariota or Ian Book, but he was at the top of the board at the time and they made the pick.
• Howie said over the next few days, they’ll reflect and evaluate what they did these past few days and look at the roster to see what else might need to be done. Roster building is a year round process, so they’ll never be complete, but they do feel good about the people they had in the building and the guys they’re adding now.
• The Eagles GM also talked about their seventh round pick came to be, saying that even late in the draft they stick to their board and don’t try to sneak one in. If there are two guys with the same grade, they’ll go for position of need, but otherwise it’s based on the player. Howie said they’re excited about Moro Ojomo — a guy with 34” arms and went to Texas at 16 years old.