Eagles can find offensive linemen without drafting them

The myopia of the moment suggests that Chip Kelly has done irrevocable damage to the Eagles and their offense, for both the near and distant futures, by failing to select at least one offensive lineman in this year's NFL draft.

Over two years now, the Eagles have sat through 14 rounds and drafted not a single tackle, guard, or center, and for a team with three projected starters who will be 30 or older this season, this strategy would at first glance seem a dereliction of Kelly's duties as coach and player-personnel czar.

Left tackle Jason Peters is 33 and, by the end of last season, hardly seemed the same preternatural force that he has been, whenever healthy, throughout his 11-year career.

Left guard Evan Mathis is 33, missed seven games in 2014 with an MCL sprain, and wants either to sign a new contract or to be traded. For that desire, he has become a 6-foot-5, 298-pound burr under Kelly's saddle, annoying him so much that Kelly all but taunted Mathis to reporters on Saturday, saying that the Eagles have never received a trade offer for him. And Allen Barbre, presumably the Eagles' new right guard, turns 31 in June.

Kelly justified the Eagles' inability to draft a lineman by telling reporters Saturday that "there was a run in the second round" of "guys who we were really excited about. . . . We're excited about the group we have to go play this season. We do have to address it as we move forward in the future."

As it turned out, among the 16 undrafted free agents the Eagles signed Saturday and Sunday, four were offensive linemen. Still, had the Eagles drafted just one, it would have gone a long way, surely, to quelling the concerns that exist over their depth and skill at what might be football's most important area. As it is, this looks like another case of Kelly's believing himself smarter than everyone else in the NFL - that his own arrogance persuaded him he didn't need to draft a lineman, that his methods were better than and different from everyone else's.

The truth is, that's not what happened. The truth is, from the look of the Eagles' roster compared to the four teams who appeared in last season's conference championship games, Kelly has gone about things pretty much as the New England Patriots, Seattle Seahawks, Green Bay Packers, and Indianapolis Colts have. And what those organizations appear to have understood is this: You don't necessarily need to draft offensive linemen to build depth along an offensive line.

Consider: Of the 16 linemen on the Eagles' roster as of Sunday, eight of them were undrafted. That figure, 50 percent, might seem high. It's not - not relative to the NFL's four best teams last season, anyway. Of the 57 offensive linemen on the Patriots', Colts', Seahawks', and Packers' rosters, 28 were undrafted. That's 49 percent of them, and those 29 linemen who were drafted include five who were selected in the sixth or seventh round.

What those numbers demonstrate is a general dichotomy in how teams go about acquiring offensive linemen and prioritizing each position along the line.

Eric Galko, the owner and director of scouting for Optimum Scouting, which consults and advises NFL teams, said Sunday that teams place a higher value, and in turn are more willing to use early-round draft picks, on tackles than they are on guards or centers. (This accent shouldn't be surprising. Tackles are most responsible for protecting the welfare of quarterbacks. This belief was the entire basis of Michael Lewis' book The Blind Side.) Just six teams, according to Galko, don't have at least one first-round pick at tackle. The Eagles aren't one of them, of course; they took Lane Johnson with the No. 4 overall pick in 2013.

The interior line positions are a different story. "From teams I spoke with," Galko said in an e-mail interview, "guard is heavily influenced by focus to improve in nuance areas of the position, reaction/focus in-game, and the clichéd (but accurate) toughness/nastiness dynamic. That's why so many obscure OGs get taken in the late rounds, because it's more about personality at times than college play/accolades/level of competition."

It's also why teams, such as the one that won Super Bowl XLIX and the three that could have, can cultivate depth or even find starters among late-round picks or undrafted players.

None of this means that the Eagles didn't pass on a player who will develop into an all-pro lineman someday, or that their five starters will be healthy and excellent and in sync all season, or that any of those four undrafted rookies will be anything more than a practice body. But it does mean that Kelly and his advisers played the same odds that the league's best teams play, and that had the Eagles drafted a lineman, it might have ended up being a cosmetic move and nothing more.

The Eagles agreed to terms with the following undrafted rookies: WR Rasheed Bailey, Delaware Valley University, Roxborough High (6-2, 205); G Brett Boyko, UNLV (6-7, 301); G Malcom Bunche, UCLA (6-6, 320); C Mike Coccia, New Hampshire (6-3, 302); WR Devante Davis, UNLV (6-3, 215); LB Jordan Dewalt-Ondijo, Duke (6-4, 240); TE Andrew Gleichert, Michigan State (6-5, 264); WR John Harris, Texas (6-2, 218); G Cole Manhart, Nebraska-Kearney (6-4, 298).

Also: RB/KR Raheem Mostert, Purdue (5-11, 190); DE Travis Raciti, San Jose State (6-5, 285); DB Denzel Rice, Coastal Carolina (6-0, 185); P Kip Smith, Oklahoma State (6-1, 235); TE Eric Tomlinson, Texas-El Paso (6-6, 263); and TE Justin Tukes, Central Florida (6-5, 250), DE B.J. McBryde, Connecticut (6-5, 307).EndText

@MikeSielski