Bowen: Will Roseman make the right offseason moves?

REPORTERS GET their first chance to talk to Howie Roseman Wednesday about the season that just concluded, about Carson Wentz's development, Doug Pederson's first year as coach, and this critical offseason.

There will be many questions. But the most important one, Roseman can't answer. Is he the right guy, and is this personnel operation good enough, to assemble a championship-level cast around Wentz? And that's assuming Roseman made the right call in moving up to draft the quarterback from North Dakota State - it looks likely right now that he did, but we still don't absolutely know that.

Like many reporters who cover the team, I've spent a fair bit of time over the years trying to parse exactly which moves Roseman deserves credit/blame for making. I accept the narrative that Howie didn't really have full control of the draft until 2012, and that his control eroded substantially when Chip Kelly came aboard in 2013. It vanished entirely in 2015, when Roseman was banished from personnel. But now, for the last year, it's been Howie's show, much more completely than it ever was when he was working with Andy Reid or Kelly.

You can get lost wandering through the weeds, tracing that path, trying to assess who really thought Marcus Smith was a good first-round fallback plan in 2014, or who banged on the table for LeSean McCoy in the second round, 53rd overall, back in 2009, but in doing so, you might miss the overview: Roseman has been an important voice in Eagles personnel for about a decade, excluding 2015. And it hasn't been a good decade, in terms of acquiring talent.

Roseman became vice president of player personnel in 2006, was named general manager in 2010. The Eagles haven't won a playoff game since the 2008 season. They have made the playoffs two of the last seven years.

It might mean something that there is a new player personnel vice president, Joe Douglas. (Isn't there always a new player personnel vice president, or some equivalent, though? Google "Eagles" and "player personnel" for a stroll down memory lane with Ed Marynowitz, Tom Gamble, Tom Donahoe, Louis Riddick, Jason Licht and Ryan Grigson, just to name a few.)

Douglas spent 16 years with the Baltimore Ravens, who won a pair of Super Bowls in that span, before spending a year with the Chicago Bears. That is just about all we know about him. The Ravens have an excellent personnel operation under Ozzie Newsome, but teams keep hiring coaches who have worked for Bill Belichick, and those coaches somehow don't manage to turn other operations into the Patriots. So we'll see what Douglas brings, and how much Roseman listens to him.

Everybody feels the team's most critical needs this offseason are at cornerback and wide receiver. Problem: historically, the Eagles are terrible at evaluating cornerbacks and wide receivers.

The last starting-quality corners drafted by the Eagles were Lito Sheppard and Sheldon Brown in 2002. A year ago, I might have added Kelly draftee Eric Rowe (second round, 2015) to the mix, but Jim Schwartz took care of that; you're free to watch Rowe in the playoffs, playing for New England.

We all figure the Eagles will draft a corner in the early rounds this year. What we don't know is whether it will be another Curtis Marsh (third round, 2011) or Trevard Lindley (fourth round, 2010). Free-agent corners? Asante Samuel worked out well. Nnamdi Asomugha, Cary Williams, Bradley Fletcher, not so much.

Wide receivers, well, do we really need to go through all that? DeSean Jackson (second round, 2008) and Jeremy Maclin (first round, 2009) are the only real good ones the Eagles have drafted this century. They are no longer here. The Eagles got absolutely nothing when they left.

Roseman knew he was in a wideout fix last spring. His response was to sign Rueben Randle, T.J. Graham and Chris Givens, three guys who looked OK on paper but didn't make the team, and didn't make anyone else's team after they were cut. All through the spring and summer, it was evident that this trio didn't raise the talent level, and that undrafted rookies Cayleb Jones, Hunter Sharp and Marcus Johnson weren't on the verge of stardom. (No wonder Paul Turner looked like Jerry Rice.) After watching all this unfold, the best Roseman could come up with was Dorial Green-Beckham, who got five targets in the season finale and caught one pass, on a slant, the only pattern he seems to have mastered.

Just as with the corners, we can be pretty sure Roseman understands he needs wide receiving help. What we can't be sure of is that he knows how to find it.

Several people looking at the upcoming offseason have noted the Eagles' current lack of cap space for free agents - Spotrac.com ranks them 29th of the 32 teams, with $12,440,825 to spend. This is one area where I'll give Roseman plenty of credit - he'll come up with enough cap room to get a top-drawer free agent or two, through restructuring deals, cutting players, carrying over leftover 2016 money and so on.

But will he spend that cap room he creates on the right players, the ones who can make the Eagles a playoff team in 2017 and beyond?

@LesBowen

Blog: philly.com/Eaglesblog