The 2025 NFL Draft is next week, and the Philadelphia Eagles have the 32nd overall draft pick because they’re the best team in the world. That’s an undeniable fact; but because Howie Roseman loves nothing more than making trades during the draft, we don’t exactly know when and where the Eagles are actually going to make their first pick. But we sure can guess.
On top of that, we also have some rumors to dive into about player trades that could happen during draft weekend. Let’s get into it.
When and where will the Eagles make their first draft pick?
I’m going to do my best to take three different pieces of information and connect the dots in order to wildly speculate about whether the Eagles are going to trade up, trade back or sit tight with the 32nd overall pick.
Piece 1: Adam Schefter
Adam Schefter knows things, and there's a very good reason that ESPN pays him insane amounts of money to be connected to all 32 teams in the NFL. That being said, he makes some claims that are truly baffling.
On the aptly named Adam Schefter Podcast, Schefter really went out on a limb, “guaranteeing” that the Eagles are going to make a trade or two during the draft.
“Over the next two drafts, the Eagles are scheduled to have 20 draft picks," Schefter said. "They can’t have 20 players make their roster. … It would be like him and that organization to trade some of these future picks for a veteran that a team knows it’s not going to re-sign, that it knows it’s going to move on from."
Risky take there by Schefty. If I may go out on a limb as well: My neighbor’s kid is a junior in high school, and he’s 5-foot-8 and weighs 145 pounds soaking wet. He says he’s going to be the starting running back at Penn State. I predict that he won’t be.
I also predict that my surgically repaired ACL is probably going to ache at some point in the next three hours. I also predict that at some point during the draft, Roger Goodell will get booed, and he’ll play it off like the public’s unwavering disdain doesn’t affect him mentally. How about that for some bold predictions?
Now, if there is something to take away from Schefter’s metaphorical betting on every single number on the roulette wheel, it’s that he says things when he knows things. He was very coy when he said that he doesn’t know when, where or with whom the trade will happen, but it sounds like he knows that something will.
The only part that makes me feel a little iffy about connecting this prediction to the first round specifically is that Schefter later mentioned the DeAndre Swift trade, which came in the third round. But whatever, this is rumor season..
Piece 2: Howie Roseman’s first-round evaluations
On April 15, Roseman sat down to do a little pre-draft pow wow with the media alongside Nick Sirianni. The key to these pre-draft press conferences is that they’re never the complete truth; they could be full of outright lies, or they could just be full of slight omissions.
Roseman was asked whether he thinks he’ll be able to draft a first-round talent with the 32nd overall pick — an important question, given the valuable fifth-year option that comes with pick No. 32 vs. pick No. 33 — and his answer raised some eyebrows. If Roseman doesn’t think he’ll be able to get a first-round talent if he sticks and picks, then it would make sense to either trade up for a slam dunk or trade back.
"There’s never 32 first-round grades on our board," he said. "We don’t have 32 first-round grades this draft. So obviously it depends on how things go. You go through a lot of hypotheticals. You try to put yourself in any possible situation so that you’re ready to execute.”
Piece 3: First-round trade tendencies
This will be Roseman’s tenth draft since he reclaimed his throne as the Eagles' general manager back in 2016. Here’s how those first rounds have gone, and how far he’s traded up, not traded at all or traded back.
Year | Move | Player Drafted |
|---|---|---|
2016 | Up 6 | C. Wentz |
2017 | None | D. Barnett |
2018 | Back 17 (20) | D. Goedert |
2019 | Up 3 | A. Dillard |
2020 | None | J. Reagor |
2021 | Up 2 | D. Smith |
2022 | Up 2 | J. Davis |
2023 | Up 1 | J. Carter |
2023 | None | N. Smith |
2024 | None | Q. Mitchell |
He’s made nine first-round picks in all. Of those nine picks, he’s traded up five times and not traded at all three times. The only time he traded back was in 2018; he traded back from 32 to 52, then up from 52 to 49. That’s either trading back 17 or 20 picks, whichever way you want to look at it.
The peculiar thing about that trade is that it was the only other time the Eagles had the 32nd overall pick, sending it to the Ravens so they could draft Lamar Jackson. That was a pretty unique situation, and the trade was with a desperate but historically draft-smart team.
Between Schefter specifically bringing up the Eagles’ huge number of draft picks, Howie’s limited number of first-round grades and his tendency to trade up, it sure feels like the Eagles will trade up again in this draft, but nothing monumental — probably no higher than the 25th pick.
A Vic Fangio detractor is available
The only problem with the Eagles having a general manager who is addicted to trading is that every single time a player becomes available, a whole bunch of people throw the Eagles out as a trade partner. It’s especially a problem when he's a player that the Eagles don’t need and has a bad history with one of the Eagles’ coordinators. Enter: Jalen Ramsey and the Miami Dolphins.
On Tuesday afternoon, ESPN’s Marcel Louis-Jacques reported that the Dolphins are trying to trade Jalen Ramsey, the three-time All-Pro, seven-time Pro Bowl cornerback.
Of course, people started to speculate about where he could go. Yahoo Sports’ Coby Leibowitz crossed the line from speculation into a fever dream when he pitched a package for Ramsey featuring the 13th pick in the draft and the Dolphins' second-round pick next year in exchange for DeVonta Smith and the 32nd pick in 2025.
That’s gonna be a no from me, dawg.
Not only did the Eagles just give DeVonta Smith a three-year, $75 million extension that keeps him with the Eagles through 2028, but they are not in the business of trading away young, elite offensive weapons — especially when those players are homegrown.
On top of that, Ramsey was on that mega-underachieving 2023 Dolphins’ defense, one that was coordinated by none other than Vic Fangio. Ramsey wasn’t as big of a Fangio hater as some of the other guys on that team, but he wasn’t innocent. Let’s not get that kind of poison into the Eagles' locker room.
Leibowitz’s rationale for this trade is not only that the Eagles could use the Dolphins’ draft picks (which is fair), but also that they could use Ramsey as a veteran in the cornerback room to help develop Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean.
Buddy, those guys are already great. They just spent an entire season with Darius Slay and even James Bradberry. It’s not like they spent their entire rookie season underperforming while showing flashes of talent that just needs to be harnessed.
If we’re throwing out wild trade ideas, how about the Eagles trade their second-round draft pick and 30-year-old Dallas Goedert to the Giants for Dexter Lawrence?
Dallas Goedert trade talks
We’ve known that Dallas Goedert has been on the trading block for a little more than a month now, and it stinks; he’s been a huge part of the Eagles' offense over the past seven years, and he was their leading pass catcher in the 2024 postseason. The dude straight-up rocks, and it’s tough to think about him leaving.
Now we’ve the point at which the rumors have gone from "the Eagles are open to trading Goedert” to "this specific team is interested in Goedert", and ESPN’s Jordan Ranaan reports that the specific team in question is the New York Giants.
On a Tuesday night Giants After Dark Q&A, he said, “I heard at one point they looked into Dallas Goedert. He sounds like a guy who is going to get traded at some point in this draft. Now, I am not expecting Dallas Goedert to get traded to the Giants … It's something they are at least monitoring.”
Hopefully Ranaan is right about Goedert not going to the Giants, because they’re a talent black hole, and trading him there would all but end his career. But this might be the first time someone has publicly put a timeline on when they think Goedert will get traded.
We know that the Eagles want at least a fourth-round pick for Goedert. If they are looking for that fourth-round pick to be in this year’s draft, Ranaan’s guessing that Goedert could be gone by the end of next weekend. It’s not fun to think about, but them's the breaks.