Bowen: Lurie enthused about Eagles' direction, with 'terrific' Wentz as QB
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - Jeffrey Lurie is "more than excited" about the direction of his Eagles franchise, as the NFL Owners Meetings end and the team prepares for next month's draft, Lurie told reporters Tuesday evening.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -
Jeffrey Lurie is "more than excited" about the direction of his Eagles franchise, as the NFL Owners Meetings end and the team prepares for next month's draft, Lurie told reporters Tuesday evening.
"It's great to walk around here, having the feeling that I do, surrounded by a terrific young quarterback, a coach that really captured the locker room" in Doug Pederson, Lurie said, before he extended that great feeling to the presence of de facto general manager Howie Roseman and player personnel vice president Joe Douglas, whose hiring Lurie called "the pivotal moment of the last year, as well." Lurie presumably meant bringing in Douglas was just about as important as acquiring Carson Wentz.
But it wasn't an, "Oh boy, just wait until you see our team this year" type of excitement. In fact, the Eagles' chairman said the upcoming draft won't be so much about what the team needs right now, as it will be about providing valuable assets for, say, 2020, when presumably, Wentz will be ready to lead the Eagles to a championship.
Getting there will require "multiple drafts in a row . . . surrounding that quarterback (with talent) on all sides of the ball," Lurie said. He said that task is "hard to accomplish, but it's not that complicated."
He said the draft will be "built by Joe," but Roseman will make the final decisions on picks. "I have a tremendous amount of confidence in Howie, and I have a tremendous amount of confidence in how he has organized football operations," Lurie said.
"We'll make moves that will make us better this year. However, we won't make a move where it's going to cost us flexibility, or ability to use resources, in future years. Because we're in the mode where we're not one player away. We have lots of holes. You've got to recognize that first - we have lots of holes, and we have to draft really well over the next few years to accomplish what we want to accomplish, early on in Carson's career."
Lurie's first session with the media since last year's NFL meetings was, not surprisingly, very much about Wentz, the quarterback the Eagles moved up in the 2016 draft to take second overall. When last we spoke with chairman Jeffrey, the Eagles had moved up only from 13th to eighth. Wentz was a distant possibility, and Lurie was touting Sam Bradford's franchise QB potential, while hinting that the team also hoped to draft a quarterback.
A few things have happened since then, most notably the trades with the Cleveland Browns and Minnesota Vikings that brought Wentz and took Bradford off the books, while restoring the 2017 first-round pick lost in the Cleveland deal.
Listening to Lurie wend his way through dense thickets of verbiage for more than 35 minutes, after the meetings officially adjourned Tuesday, it was clear that to Lurie, while Roseman might have been the architect of some bad drafts, and a prime force in the disastrous reach for Chip Kelly at the end of the Andy Reid era, for now, Roseman has redeemed himself, in his acquisition of Wentz. As long as Wentz continues to progress and Roseman and Douglas continue to build a foundation around him they have Lurie's confidence and his passionate endorsement.
Cynics might recall that two years ago, about 50 feet from where Lurie spoke Tuesday, Lurie was equally passionate about and confident in Kelly, whom he had just put in charge of personnel, while banishing Roseman.
Asked about the Kelly era Tuesday, Lurie seemed to say its demise had a lot to do with the team's instability at quarterback.
"No other sport is so determined by one position," Lurie said.
Once Roseman was restored to power, after Kelly stripped the team of offensive playmakers and was fired at 6-9 in 2015, "Howie and I thought identically on this situation," Lurie said, adding that they were "mutually obsessed" with how to obtain a franchise QB, knowing that some years there just aren't any in the draft, and even when there are, the teams picking in the top spots generally want them.
Lurie denied that his day-to-day role with the team has changed; he said that, as always, "my role is to provide the resources, but I ask a lot of questions to create the final strategy that our guys take."
A perception of greater owner involvement partly grew from buzz around the league that Lurie stepped in and vetoed quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo's opportunity to interview with the Jets to become their offensive coordinator. Lurie said that Pederson made the decision and he "just supported Doug."
"This was a no-brainer," Lurie said. "Very good young coach . . . It was important, as Doug and I talked about it, in Year 2 to keep the same quarterback coach, and just allow that to flourish for Carson."
Lurie told a pair of anecdotes about how he came to believe Wentz was the real deal (though Lurie emphasized that he can't really be entirely sure of that, until Wentz is a finished product).
The first concerned their predraft meeting in North Dakota with the QB, before the final trade from eighth to second.
"I'm sitting in the room in North Dakota, and they are grilling Carson for a long time," Lurie said, referring to DeFilippo, Pederson and offensive coordinator Frank Reich. "After the meeting, Carson leaves, and they all look at each other. Doug, Frank, John, they all start talking, and they each ask each other, 'Have you ever seen anything like this?' mentally, in terms of what they asked him to do . . . It was one of those sort of defining moments."
Asked how the Eagles determined Wentz was ready to start right away as a rookie, when a rib injury limited him to one preseason game, Lurie recalled the workout Wentz went though on the field before the preseason game in Indianapolis. He had healed enough to throw, but not to risk getting reinjured in a meaningless contest.
"Carson was hurt, and we watched him work out before the game, with John DeFillipo and Frank Reich, and it was every bit as talented a workout as he had at North Dakota State when we all went out there . . . You're talking about a marathon workout," Lurie said. "Frank and Flip came over to me and Howie - they'd already spoken to Doug - this was before the Bradford thing even became a possibility - and said, 'I gotta tell ya, this kid is physically and mentally ready.' And that was quite a statement, coming from them."
From there, "it was a tough but obvious decision to trade Sam," Lurie said.
Some other points Lurie touched upon Tuesday:
On whether the Eagles would take a chance in the draft on a player such as Oklahoma running back Joe Mixon, who broke a woman's jaw in an altercation, Lurie said he wouldn't talk about specific prospects, but: "We've been an organization that has given players a second chance. However, we've also been an organization that really values character."
Lurie confirmed that the Eagles' attempt to have the NFL consider letting teams wear a second helmet with their alternate uniforms was so the Eagles can wear their traditional kelly green at least a few times a year. Lurie said several teams are interested in seeing this initiative move forward, and he hopes it can happen next year. The competition committee declined to endorse the proposed change for these meetings.
"I want to see us use kelly green as our alternate and Thursday-night type of uniform," Lurie said. Asked about moving permanently back to kelly green, Lurie said he wanted to see reaction to using it on a limited basis before any further moves were made.
Lurie, a member of the league's finance committee, said he hated to see the Oakland Raiders moving to Las Vegas, but he knows the Raiders did all they could to make their stadium situation work in Oakland. "It was just an impossible situation they got into," he said.
Lurie said the Eagles will not be doing HBO's Hard Knocks this year.
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