On May 3rd, 1979, the Philadelphia Eagles drafted linebacker Jerry Robinson in the first round. On April 24, 2025, they drafted Johaad Campbell, the linebacker from Alabama. That’s 45 years between first-round linebackers.
In that time, MTV started, hit its prime, and then turned into a channel that just shows reruns of Ridiculousness. The Cosby Show started, ended, and… well, you know. We’ve gone from eight-track players to cassette tapes to CDs to MP3s to streaming music. Hell, the last time the Cowboys made it to the NFC Championship game was the 1995 season. That was closer to the 1979 draft than we currently are to the 1995 season.
It’s been a long time, and the Eagles got another guy that just kind of fell into their lap, more or less. Sometimes the draft works in mysterious ways.
Trades helped the Eagles get their linebacker — but they weren’t the Eagles’ trades.
Going into the draft, Howie Roseman said that the Eagles didn’t see 32 prospects with first-round grades. That makes sense because there are hardly ever 32 draft prospects with first-round grades.
Unfortunately, with the Eagles picking at 32, it was kind of shaping up to be a situation where the Eagles would either have to trade back or draft a guy in the first round who wasn’t necessarily deserving of that kind of a pick.
That wasn’t the case. At the post-first-round press conference, Howie Roseman said Campbell was “... a top-10 player on our board,” which is huge if true. There is approximately a 0.0% chance that he would ever say, ‘Yeah, we didn’t have a first-round grade on this guy, but we took him because… uh… well. We took him, and that’s what matters.’
It does seem like he probably did actually have a top-10 or near top-10 grade for the Eagles, though. News came out during the draft, that the Eagles were trying to trade up to the early 20s, and in that same press conference, Roseman confirmed that they were aiming for Campbell at that point too.
And then, the Eagles actually did end up trading up one spot with the Chiefs to get him. All this to say: it seems like the Eagles were all the way in on Campbell. If you’re willing to trade up for a linebacker, you better be.
When the draft got into the late 20s, it felt like everything was shaping up for the Eagles to draft an offensive lineman. That would obviously be great, but it’s not exactly fun. Yeah, the Eagles won the Super Bowl, which is literally the greatest thing ever, but free agency was about a month after that, and the defensive roster started to get decimated while there were never any splashy additions.
That whole thing was smart because of money and stuff like that, but it just wasn’t fun. Getting a linebacker in the first round is both helpful for the team and a shot of adrenaline during an offseason that doesn’t feel as good as it should.
I imagine one of the main reasons he kept falling so far was because of injury stuff, but based on where he was picked, and again, that the Eagles were trying to trade up for him, that they don’t have any long-term concerns for his health… and then Roseman said, “We do not have any long-term concerns with his health,” so that’s pretty sweet.
If the Eagles were actually able to trade up into the early 20s to pick Campbell like they had been trying to, it would’ve been kind of a weird pick, but luckily that didn’t happen and it’s probably got a lot to do with some of the ludicrous trades that were happening all night.
The two craziest ones were when the Giants and the Falcons traded back up into the first round. The Giants gave a second-round pick, a third-round pick, and a 2026 third-round pick to the Texans for the 25th overall pick. That means the Giants did all of that to move up nine spots so they could draft their wildly mediocre quarterback of the future. The Falcons saw that trade and somehow did something even dumber.
Atlanta traded back into the first round to get edge rusher James Pierce Jr. They gave up a second, a seventh, and also their 2026 first-round pick to the Rams for the 26th overall pick and a third-round pick this year. Giving up a future first for a late first-round pick is a very good way to get fired. Howie Roseman lucked out that he wasn’t able to compete with that kind of lunacy.
Roseman did trade a fifth-round pick to the Chiefs to move up one spot to get Jihaad Campbell, so he didn’t actually fall all the way to the Eagles, but given the circumstances, it still feels right to say he did. When push comes to shove, the Eagles traded a fifth-round pick to win the Super Bowl; Howie Roseman just fleeced the Chiefs twice. It’s always Howie SZN.