Eagles' Roseman cautions about trading up

BOSTON - The night before Howie Roseman's third draft as the Eagles' general manager in 2012, the deal with the Seahawks was already done.

Once the Eagles were on the clock, Roseman picked up the phone and completed the trade, moving up from 15th to 12th overall to nab Fletcher Cox.

"The trade was done 9 minutes before we picked," Roseman said on Saturday. "There was so much time on the clock that we then got another trade offer. Trade chat is nice, but moving up is really player driven."

In order to slide up three spots, the Eagles sent a fourth- and sixth-round pick. It ended up costing them more than teams higher in the draft, such as Jacksonville, which gave up only a fourth-round pick that year to jump up fewer slots from No. 7 to No. 5 overall.

Speaking at MIT's Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston over the weekend, Roseman generally cautioned against moving up in the draft. He was not specifically speaking about Cox, or in the case on everyone's mind, quarterback Marcus Mariota.

"You can kind of convince yourself of, 'Who am I really going to get in the fifth or sixth round?' I'm willing to give up that pick because I really want this player in the second or third round," Roseman said. "The guys who are really good at the draft, if you're hitting on 60 percent of your first-round picks, that's a pretty good track record. And then it's dropping as you go through the rounds. So, really, the more chances you get, the more tickets to the lottery you get, the better you should be doing."

Brian Burke, founder of the Advanced Analytics web site, reminded: "When you trade up to get better, 31 other teams already made the choice to not take that player."

"The history of trading up for one player, when you look at those trades, isn't good for the team trading up and putting a lot of resources into it," Roseman said.

With NFL free agency looming, Roseman also said it's easy to fall into a similar trap when courting free agents, saying, "What's another $500,000 or $1 million?"

"You can't predict what 31 other teams are going to do," Roseman said. "We want to win. We are competitive people."

Roseman spoke on a panel called "The New Blocking and Tackling: Applying Data in Professional Football," along with New England Patriots director of player personnel Nick Caserio and Burke.

Roseman, 39, signed autographs and posed for a selfie with a young boy following the conference. Through a team spokesman, he declined to speak to the Daily News.

Roseman spoke publicly for the first time since Jan. 2, when he was stripped of his title as general manager and elevated to the role of "executive vice president of football operations," but does not control player personnel decisions.

For more from MIT's Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, pick up a copy of Thursday's Daily News.

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