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Was Eagles' draft a winner last year? It all depends on Wentz | Jeff McLane

Howie Roseman bet the house on the promising QB from North Dakota State. So far, so good.

During his year in personnel purgatory, Howie Roseman devoted hours of research on roster building just in case, fingers crossed, he would get another opportunity to run the Eagles' football operations.

He dug deep into the history of the NFL, devoured charts supplied by his analytics staff, studied the current landscape of the league, and came to the conclusion that - wait for it - teams with elite quarterbacks exponentially increase their chances of winning a Super Bowl.

"When I look back on some of the mistakes I made, they were about just trying to get into the playoffs and believing that once you get into the playoffs, maybe you have a chance every year because it's a shorter field, and you can just get hot," Roseman said in January. "But really, when you look at the Super Bowl champions over the last decade, really since the Super Bowl was in effect, they all have a franchise quarterback."

Roseman's light bulb moment might not rank up there with the invention of the forward pass, but where he may have been revelatory was in the Eagles' unprecedented maneuvering to draft a quarterback. Other teams had previously surrendered more picks, but to jump from the No. 13 overall selection to No. 8 and finally to No. 2, Roseman parted with two players and five picks.

In potentially mortgaging the future, the Eagles' vice president of football operations essentially declared that there isn't a future to risk if you don't have a franchise-caliber quarterback. But you must first identify that quarterback and you had better be correct in your evaluation if you are to forfeit so many resources.

Carson Wentz, of course, was the horse Roseman was willing to gamble on. It wasn't his choice alone. Coach Doug Pederson pushed for the North Dakota State product, as did offensive coordinator Frank Reich and quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo. The personnel department also endorsed the move. And, ultimately, owner Jeffrey Lurie signed off on the decision to do whatever it took to get the quarterback.

But no one within the organization will be as linked to Wentz as Roseman - not even Pederson, who would likely be the more expendable of the two. If the quarterback continues on the path he set after a promising rookie season, then everyone wins. But if Wentz needs time, Roseman would likely have more of a grace period than Pederson.

Consider Lurie's own assessment of Wentz this March. The owner gave credit to Pederson and the other former quarterbacks on the coaching staff who scouted and deemed the Division I-AA product worthy of such an investment. But Lurie saved his greatest praise for Roseman, who swung the deals for Wentz.

"If Carson's what we think he is, that's the story," Lurie said. "How do you do that? Howie came up with a plan. We wanted to reallocate resources away from a couple of the players we acquired in terms of getting up to eight from 13, without having to use up draft picks to accomplish that.

"How do you do that? He was able to do that. It was outstanding."

Even Roseman wasn't shy about patting himself on the back when asked to evaluate the year he had days after the Eagles finished 7-9 this past season.

"Well, it starts with the quarterback position, and I was very vocal internally about the need to have a long-term answer at that position, and felt like it was the most important thing we could possibly do," Roseman said. "I sit up here really excited about the future of this franchise, but knowing that there's a lot of work that needs to be done."

The 2016 draft will be judged almost entirely on the Wentz selection. The Eagles drafted a potential future starter in offensive lineman Isaac Seumalo in the third round, and they found some contributors from the latter rounds like running back Wendell Smallwood, tackle Halapoulivaati Vaitai, and cornerback Jalen Mills. But in the case of Smallwood, Mills, and defensive end Alex McCalister, Roseman took risks on players who had off-the-field incidents.

"We forget sometimes these guys are college kids and things happen," he said then.

As important as the quarterback is, championships can't be won on that position alone. And Roseman relinquished a significant amount to jump to get Wentz.

Byron Maxwell (and his hefty contract) and Kiko Alonso went to the Dolphins so that the Eagles could move up five spots to No. 8, and the Eagles sent that pick, along with 2016 third- and fourth-rounders, a 2017 first-rounder, and a 2018 second-rounder to the Browns for the No. 2 pick and a fourth-rounder in 2017.

Roseman was able to recoup a 2017 first-rounder when he dealt Sam Bradford to the Vikings just before last season. Trades have always been one of his fortes. But he must still fill in many missing pieces. His draft record isn't strong, as chronicled throughout this series.

The 2017 draft, which will begin Thursday, affords Roseman the opportunity to further build around Wentz. But has he learned from past mistakes, and will he rely more on lieutenants like vice president of player personnel Joe Douglas, who Lurie has said is crafting the Eagles' board?

Click here for more coverage of the 2017 NFL draft in Philadelphia. Our live blog will have updates from the event starting Thursday at noon.

What made the Wentz selection a successful one, at least thus far, was a collaborative approach to involve all facets of the Eagles' increasingly vast operations.

"It was a very detailed and involved process. I can't begin to tell you. Some day we can write a book about this if it works out," Lurie said last month at the NFL owners meetings. "Very detailed. Multiple workouts. The testing was physiologically and medically in every way you could imagine and in ways you never even heard of. Eighty pages of reports."

Wentz was obviously on the team's radar during his junior and senior seasons, but after Chip Kelly and Ed Marynowitz were fired, the Eagles had to reboot much of their scouting department. And it wasn't until the Senior Bowl in January that Roseman, Pederson, and other evaluators first met Wentz.

He displayed all the necessary skills on the field, but he was equally as impressive during their meeting.

"We left the interview and he reminded us of Brent Celek, kind of his Midwestern roots, tough guy persona," Roseman said a year later. "It was a huge compliment."

The scouting combine further cemented the Eagles' initial impressions. The team recently released a short video of its meeting with Wentz, and he could be seen striking all the right notes as DeFilippo quizzed him during film review. The Eagles left Indianapolis with him still atop their board and a plan to acquire him, but they weren't sure they could pull it off.

In case they couldn't, they signed Bradford to a two-year, $35 million contract. They also inked free agent Chase Daniel to a three-year, $21 million deal. It was an enormous amount of money committed to quarterback, and they hadn't even yet drafted Wentz, but Roseman was following the blueprint of Andy Reid-Joe Banner - and before them Ron Wolf - of investing in the position.

"When we were really successful," Roseman said last April, "we invested in quarterbacks and turned around some of them in trades that got us assets."

The Daniel signing would come back to bite them, but they lucked out with the Bradford deal when Vikings quarterback Teddy Bridgewater suffered a season-ending knee injury before the season.

"We basically bought a draft choice," Lurie said, in retrospect, of the Bradford deal.

Shortly after Bradford's contract was extended, Roseman dealt Maxwell and Alonso, two players acquired by Kelly, to Miami. He said afterward that moving up to No. 8 allowed the Eagles to target one of 10 players, but he conceded this past January that his comments were hogwash.

"Everything I said was nonsensical," Roseman said. "We were trying to get to one or two. We were trying to get a quarterback."

So, too, were the Rams. But they wanted Jared Goff and they wanted to leapfrog the Browns. So two weeks before the draft they sent the 2016 No. 15 overall pick, two second-rounders, a third-rounder, and 2017 first- and third-rounders to the Titans for the No. 1 pick and fourth- and sixth-rounders in 2016.

Six days later, the Eagles made the exchange with the Browns, who waited until the third round to draft a quarterback (Cody Kessler). Roseman said that he was fine with either Wentz or Goff - "The only way you can make this trade is being really comfortable with both those guys," he said then - but he wouldn't have made the move unless he knew which one the Rams were taking.

The Eagles weathered an initial storm when Bradford asked to be moved following the trade, and slow-played Wentz's timetable in terms of readiness. They said they wanted him to sit at least one year.

"We saw that with Doug being here with Donovan" McNabb, Roseman said. "You saw that in Green Bay [with Aaron Rodgers]. You saw that in San Diego with Philip Rivers. You certainly saw that in New England with Tom Brady. . . . These are young guys and the NFL is a big jump from any level."

But Wentz proved a quick study, and dealing Bradford was a no-brainer. The rookie had an above-average first season, but he struggled enough to temper expectations. But hopes are high. Wentz carries the future of the Eagles on his shoulders, not to mention that of Roseman.

jmclane@phillynews.com

@Jeff_McLane