Eagles' Roseman still trying to win respect

THIS WAS a year ago January, a few weeks after Chip Kelly's first-round KO of Howie Roseman for control of the Eagles' 90-man roster.

ESPN football analyst Louis Riddick, who had spent six years in the Eagles' personnel department, including three as the team's pro personnel director, was on 97.5 The Fanatic discussing the dramatic turn of events in the organization.

"The people who are doing what they should be doing are doing what they should be doing," Riddick said. "And the people who shouldn't be doing what they were doing are no longer doing it."

That was Riddick's not so subtle way of saying that Roseman never had any business being an NFL general manager.

It certainly can be argued that Riddick is not the most objective person in the world when it comes to Roseman since he lost out to him for the Eagles' GM job in 2010, and was let go by Roseman three years later.

But the truth is, Riddick hardly is the only scout or personnel executive who doesn't hold Roseman in terribly high regard, a fact that Roseman himself is well aware of.

Even now, more than a decade-and-a-half after he joined the Eagles and six years after his promotion to GM, Roseman still is considered an outlier by much of the NFL scouting community.

He didn't come up through the scouting ranks like many of the league's personnel executives and GMs. He never played the game at any level.

That's not to suggest he didn't work hard to get where he is. He did. It just means there are a lot of people who question whether he deserves to be where he is.

A graduate of Fordham Law School, he started with the Eagles in 2000 as an entry-level salary-cap intern and staff counsel and eventually persuaded Andy Reid to give him a job in the Eagles' personnel department.

He became the team's vice president of player personnel in 2008, just eight years after he graduated from law school. And in 2010, at the age of 34, he became the league's youngest GM in 30 years.

"The game has changed, and not necessarily for the better," one NFC personnel executive said. "You go back to the '80s and '90s, it was about earning your spurs and being out on the road. About watching and learning to evaluate each position and going to college campuses, as opposed to just sitting there (in the office) and (being told), 'OK, you're in charge. You're going to put value on players.'

"But what's your foundation? Do you really know what you're looking at? Or is it the people around you telling you? If it's the people around you telling you, then why are you in charge? Why aren't they in charge?"

Roseman, who will turn 41 in June, was put back in charge of the Eagles' football operation four months ago after owner Jeff Lurie fired Kelly.

Lurie has been purposely vague about Roseman's role since he brought him back from exile. He knows Roseman has his share of critics. He knows there are people out there who still are wondering why the hell he gave Roseman a raise and a contract extension last year after demoting him.

Initially, he suggested that Roseman would be more or less a placeholder until a new personnel head could be hired, and that the new guy essentially would be the organization's top personnel man.

But the Eagles don't plan to hire anyone until after the draft, and when they do, it now seems pretty certain that he will work under Roseman as a vice president of player personnel.

While Lurie has said Roseman, the new personnel guy and head coach Doug Pederson will collaborate on all personnel decisions, it's been pretty clear during the offseason who is driving this car. And it's not Pederson.

"It's not a dictatorship here," Roseman said last week. "We would never put a player on the team that the coaches don't like. That's not our job, that's not our role.

"I learned that from coach Reid. If we get into a discussion and the scouting staff feels really strongly about a player and the coaches don't like that player, we'll get together and watch that player (on film) and talk about that player more. At the end of the day, you're only taking seven, eight, nine guys off the (draft) board. You want everybody in the building to be excited about them."

The fact that Roseman never played organized football shouldn't necessarily be a mark against him, but it is.

While baseball and basketball have more or less opened their arms to numbers geeks and lawyers and others with limited or no playing experience, many in football still view guys like Roseman, who never strapped on a jock or delivered a block, with skepticism.

Roseman has lived with the "non-football guy" perception ever since he made the switch to scouting.

"You can't control that narrative," he said last week. "When you look at it, running a team and making decisions, you've got to get a lot of information.

"I've been very fortunate to be around a lot of good people who did play, who did take the time to sit down and talk about what they're looking for in the position. The only way to answer all of those questions (about his ability) is to put together a good team and win."

Said former NFL GM Bill Polian, who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame last year: "I don't think (not having played) is an impediment if you've been in it for a long time like Howie's been. If you're in it for a long time, you learn the ropes and pay your dues. There's absolutely no issue.

"Now, if you come in from practicing law or something like that, and never were really out scouting, that's a different story."

"Quite honestly," said former Eagles quarterback and current ESPN analyst Ron Jaworski, "I think it's irrelevant (whether a GM/player-personnel head ever played). There probably was a time when it was easier to relate to someone that played the game.

"But as the game has moved on, the complex sophistication with which organizations are now run, I don't think it's important at all anymore whether a guy played the game. You hire other people in those positions to evaluate."

Part of the problem in judging Roseman's ability as a talent evaluator is you're not exactly sure what he has been responsible for. He succeeded Tom Heckert as the team's general manager in 2010 when Heckert left for Cleveland, but Reid had final say on all personnel decisions when he was the coach.

Roseman's first two drafts as GM were absolute disasters. The Eagles had a total of 24 picks in the 2010 and '11 drafts and essentially found just two keepers - defensive end Brandon Graham (first round, 2010) and center Jason Kelce (sixth round, 2011). But were those drafts on Reid or Roseman or both?

When Lurie fired Reid after the 2012 season, he absolved Roseman of blame for both of those drafts, saying Reid was in charge. Maybe that was truly the case, or maybe he was just protecting Roseman.

The Eagles had solid drafts in 2012 and '13, both of which were run by Roseman, even though Reid still was with the Eagles during the '12 draft.

They got Fletcher Cox, Mychal Kendricks, Vinny Curry, Nick Foles, Brandon Boykin and Dennis Kelly in '12, and hit bull's-eyes with their first three picks in '13, selecting Lane Johnson, Zach Ertz and Bennie Logan.

The Eagles selected wide receiver Jordan Matthews in the second round of the '14 draft, but also took defensive end Marcus Smith in the first round. So far, Smith has been a major disappointment. The '14 draft appeared to be a collaborative effort between Roseman and Kelly, though Kelly has insisted he had nothing to do with the Smith selection, which, frankly, is hard to believe.

"The hard part (in evaluating Roseman) is you really don't know who made a lot of the (draft) choices," said Jaworki, who served as an adviser in the Eagles' head-coaching search in January.

"You'd like to be able to say, 'OK, he picked this guy and he was a bust.' Or, 'Andy chose this guy and he was great.' Or 'Chip chose this guy and he was a bust.' But I just don't know how they operated and who made those choices."

A scout for another NFC team agreed.

"You don't know who pulled the trigger on Marcus Smith. You don't know what the story was on Danny Watkins," he said of the 2011 first-round bust. "Was it (former offensive-line coach) Howard Mudd? Was it Andy Reid? Was it Howie? You've got to pin it on somebody.

"That's my whole problem with a collaborative structure. Who has the final say? Because mistakes are going to be made. And they're going to be costly. Who takes the fall?"

Roseman has had to play catch-up since being put back in charge of what is one of the league's youngest and most inexperienced scouting staffs in January.

Tom Donahoe, 68, a longtime NFL personnel executive who had been working part-time for the Eagles the last three years, was named senior director of player personnel to help Roseman prepare for the draft.

"I'm glad Howie's back involved in personnel," said Donahoe, who is expected to return to his part-time role after the draft. "He should be.

"Howie's very open to your opinions and your evaluations of players. We have had a lot of good discussion on players. We don't always agree, but he wants to hear what you have to say.

"He talks to a lot of people in the league that he trusts to share opinions and see how they feel. We all do that. The key thing in scouting, and Howie is good at this, is you have to keep an open mind and you have to be willing to have discussion and debate and say, 'OK, let's sit down and look at the tape together. What did you see? Here's what I saw.' "

@Pdomo Blog: philly.com/Eaglesblog