Howie Roseman is totally cool with waiting until the last minute to get his roster ready to go for Week 1. We can spend the entire offseason wondering what the Philadelphia Eagles are going to do at safety, and then BAM—a week before the season starts—they’ll sign C.J. Gardner-Johnson and put the issue to bed.
Since Roseman took over as general manager in the 2016 season, more often than not he makes a move in late August or early September that changes the way the Eagles season will go.
Not all late offseason moves are created equal
The only trend in Howie Roseman’s late offseason signings is that he’s trying to fix a problem. It’s not like he’s just making a move just to make a move, or that he’s focusing on upgrading on specific position. We’re going to look at this from the most recent late-offseason trade/signing to the oldest.
2024: Jahan Dotson
For a whole bunch of the 2024 offseason, we had no idea who the Eagles’ third wide receiver was going to be. They had the best starting wide receiver duo in the NFL in A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith, but who was after that?
Well, it turns out the answer didn’t matter until the Super Bowl, but it ended up being Jahan Dotson, who the Eagles traded for on August 22, 2024.
They sent a third-round and two seventh-round picks to the Commanders for Dotson and a fifth-round pick. Up until Dotson’s catch on the second drive of the Super Bowl, it seems like that trade might not necessarily have been worth it… but ‘results over process’ on this one.
2023: Zach Cunningham, Myles Jack, and Alberto Okwuegbunam
Late in the 2023 offseason, the Eagles made three additions: linebackers Zach Cunningham and Myles Jack, and tight end Albert Okwuegbunam.
The Eagles traded a sixth-round pick to the Broncos for Albert O. and a seventh-round pick on August 29th, 2023. He only played 57 total snaps that season and it ended up being a big-time head-scratcher, especially since he went on the IR before the 2024 season and was released after the trade deadline.
The Eagles signed both Myles Jack and Zach Cunningham on August 6, 2024. Jack ended up retiring two weeks later, but Cunningham stuck around and became one of the Eagles starting linebackers.
He was perfectly average, which was a good and bad thing. It was good because he outplayed the $1.6 million that he was paid, and bad because the Eagles' defense was terrible, and the linebackers were exposed for almost the entire season.
2022: C.J. Gardner-Johnson
Going into the 2022 season, the Eagles needed some help in the secondary. At Safety, the only player who we knew was good was Marcus Epps. Other than him, it was Reed Blankenship (who was a UDFA), K’Von Wallace, Jaquiski Tartt, Andre Chachare, and Anthony Harris.
Roster cuts that season were on August 30th. That day the Eagles released Tartt, Chachare, and Harris, but also traded a fifth and sixth-round pick to the Saints for C.J. Gardner Johnson.
That was a mondo-sized upgrade over what the Eagles could’ve been throwing out there in Week 1: Wallace hadn’t necessarily shown any kind of juice, and you don’t want to trust a starting job to a UDFA.
The Eagles had a hole in their roster and Howie Roseman plugged it in a pretty spectacular way; with a safety who was a league leader in interceptions.
2021: Gardner Minshew
The 2021 offseason was a whirlwind for the Eagles. In March, the Eagles traded away Carson Wentz, which meant Jalen Hurts was going to be the new starter. A week after that, the Eagles signed Joe Flacco, seemingly to be Hurts’ backup.
The Jaguars drafted Trevor Lawrence that season, so on August 27th, the Eagles traded them a conditional sixth-round pick for Gardner Minshew. That ended up being a pretty valuable trade because two months later, the Eagles traded Flacco to the Jets, who lost Zach Wilson to a messed up knee, for a conditional sixth-round pick.
It didn’t necessarily fill any urgent rost holes at the time, but it kind of went to show how Howie Roseman’s “Quarterback Factory” theory might actually have some legs.
2017: Ronald Darby Trade
On August 11th, 2017, the Eagles traded wide receiver Jordan Matthews and their 2018 third-round pick to the Bills for Ronald Darby. He was brought in to compete with Patrick Robinson, Rasul Douglas, and Jalen Mills for one of the starting cornerback spots. It ended up being Darby and Mills who won.
It was kind of short-lived for Darby though. He ended up dislocating his ankle pretty early in the Week 1 game against Washington and then missed the next eight games.
He came back after the injury and played well, specifically in the playoffs, where he had 18 tackles and six passes defended.
Aside from the injury, the Ronald Darby experience went about as well as it could go. You bring in a guy to compete for a job and see if he can be an upgrade at a position, he wins that job, and then he peaks in the playoffs and helps win a Super Bowl.
2016: Sam Bradford
2016 is kind of an outlier of an offseason. Not only was it Doug Pederson’s first one as a head coach, but also Howie Roseman regained his throne as the Eagles’ general manager after he was usurped by Chip Kelly. A decent chunk of the offseason was cleaning up the mess that Kelly made.
Roseman had to get rid of Byron Maxwell, Kiko Alonso, DeMarco Murray, and Sam Bradford. The Bradford departure is one of the more memorable ones in recent history.
The Eagles signed Bradford to a two-year $36 million deal in March of 2016. Then, the Eagles traded up the second overall pick in the 2016 draft and picked Carson Wentz. That didn’t really vibe with Bradford, and he said that he wanted to be traded.
Bradford ended up not going to any other team’s optional workouts and activities in the Spring. When he came back to the team, there had to have been some kind of conversation where Howie Roseman said, ‘Hey, Sam… Listen. You don’t want to be here and we don’t want you to be here even though we kind of acted like we did when we paid you a disgusting amount of money. How about this: you do good in the preseason, and we’ll ship you off to some team that’s dumb enough to overlook your injury history.’
Sam probably responded, ‘Sure Howie. Whatever. I bet in four years Wentz forgets how to play football and you’ll draft that freshman quarterback from Alabama. He’ll transfer to Oklahoma, which of course you know is my alma mater, and he’ll lead you to two Super Bowls and win one of them.’
If that’s how the conversation went, both of them were right. Bradford played well in the preseason games and, on Sep. 3, 2016, the Eagles traded him to the Vikings for a first-round and a fourth-round pick. Bradford had a good season in 2016 before his injuries caught up to him in 2017. Nailed it.
Sam was unhappy and valuable, so keeping him would’ve been financially criminal. That trade was just good business. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that the Eagles are going to be able to get a premium pick for Bryce Huff — this is more of a ‘Howie Roseman hasn’t exclusively traded for players in the late offseason’ situation.