PHILADELPHIA – The Eagles had their annual pre-draft media availability at the NovaCare Complex Wednesday with GM Howie Roseman and head coach Nick Sirianni doing the heavy lifting as usual-attendee Andy Weidl, Philadelphia's top scout, being a late scratch due to illness.
Here are five takeaways from Wednesday's session with the 2022 draft looming next week:
THE EAGLES AREN'T TAKING A QUARTERBACK
Let me amend that to the Eagles aren't taking a QB early in the draft.
It's no secret that the NFL is a quarterback-driven league and Roseman admitted that the signal-callers are "the anchor of any draft."
"There’s some uncertainty about where the quarterbacks will go in this draft," he added. "For us, we just go by our rankings and what we think is the right way to stack the board."
The top five QBs by consensus are Pitt's Kenny Pickett, Liberty's Malik Willis, Cincinnati's Desmond Ridder, Ole Miss' Matt Corral, and North Carolina's Sam Howell.
The often-maligned group may not be worthy of top-15 billing even though one or two will almost certainly get pushed up that high but few would blink if all five are gone over the first 64 picks, so perhaps when it's all said and done, the class will be a little undervalued.
Either way, the Eagles foreshadowed their thinking at the game's most important position by pushing one of their three scheduled first-round picks into 2023 in a pre-draft trade with New Orleans.
"We’re excited about Jalen Hurts," Roseman said. "We’re going to support Jalen and want him to have a great career in Philly."
Things rarely go to plan in life and that kind of explains the Eagles' path through free agency where the organization targeted a host of players and came up with two potential starters on defense in Haason Reddick and Kyzir White plus a Nick Sirianni-favored Band-Aid at wide receiver in Zach Pascal.
Attempts were made with wideouts Christian Kirk and Allen Robinson, as well as safety Marcus Williams, with two of the three getting overpaid and the other choosing the Super Bowl champs.
Failure to get some of those players plus a cornerback like Stephon Gilmore could have a negative impact on the draft but Roseman has been around the block a time or two and seems to have learned from experience.
"When you look at some of the mistakes that I’ve made personally, it’s because you try to force something," he said. "You can only do what the board allows you to do. There’s obviously a lot of time between now and when the first game starts for us to continue to address needs of the team."
Roseman calls that time talent-gathering season and, in the past, that has reached into August for the veteran GM.
The Eagles have been very disciplined when it comes to valuations of players and budget frameworks. Now that has to carry over to personnel evaluation.
"We just gotta make sure we take the best players, and not look at the draft as a short-term fix," Roseman said.
MAKING DO WITHOUT IAN CUNNINGHAM, BRANDON BROWN
Roseman lost secondary football executives Ian Cunningham and Brandon Brown to assistant GM jobs before the draft and Weidl, who missed the Wednesday session with an illness, is a reported finalist for the Steelers GM job after the draft when long-time Pittsburgh GM Kevin Colbert is set to retire.
The exits of Cunningham, who is now with Chicago as Ryan Poles' right-hand man, and Brown, who is helping Joe Schoen with the New York Giants, had the Eagles pushing for a change at the recent league meetings which was adopted. Starting next year, teams will not be able to hire "secondary football executives" until after the draft.
Of course, that has not helped the Eagles in this year's process and Brown defecting to a division rival is particularly troubling but Roseman noted that things change quickly at this time of year when it comes to intelligence on potential draft picks when the coaching staff gets involved.
"There is that part of the process that Coach [Nick Sirianni] and his staff haven't totally dove into yet," Roseman said. "The final boards aren't set. You don't have this kind of seesaw of where you have obviously the scouting and the tape, but you don't also have all the information of the character and the intangibles and the testing.
"So, to say that everything's exactly the same as it was when he and Ian left; it's not. Obviously, the coaches are a big part of our process and really the amount of work that coaches do in this is a huge part of complementing the scouts."
Cunningham and Brown may have a better feel than most about what the Eagles might like but that's all it is.
"Just like we talk about that seesaw with the tape and the testing, we also talk about having the coaches balance it with how they see guys in their scheme," Roseman noted.
"We miss Brandon and we miss Ian. We’re also happy for them and their families for the opportunity. At the end of the day, whatever we have to do for this team we'll continue to do."
A SECOND YEAR, A MORE COMFORTABLE COACH
This time last year, Sirianni was just getting his feet wet as a first-time head coach and things seemed to have slowed down for him and his staff when it comes to the process of the coaches getting involved with the personnel department's evaluations and how everything fits together.
"I think one thing I know that coaches in my past have prepared me for is to be able to clearly define what you see and how you're going to use a player," Sirianni told SI.com's Eagles Today.
The comfort of 15 months together vs. three months is shining through.
"I think that's just the thing that's made it easier, is you [the personnel] guys already know how we're going to use guys," Sirianni explained. "That doesn't mean you don't continue to have those conversations, or they don't evolve, or they don't change a little bit here and there, because you're constantly changing your process. You're constantly tweaking it to make it better.
"So those conversations happen. But mostly the conversations of, ‘Hey, this is how we would use a player with this skill set. Here's what we would do, how we would use them. Here's a player in the past - we've had those, and so we're just continuing to build on that from last year."
The Eagles have had positive and negative outcomes in recent drafts when it comes to players with questions marks due to injury.
Philadelphia took a first-round talent at a second-round discount in 2017 and did the same with Landon Dickerson last year. The former failed and the latter looks like it's going to be a rousing success.
The Eagles may take the injury route again with star Alabama receiver Jameson Williams, who is coming off an ACL tear in the National Championship Game against Georgia, or David Ojabo, the talented Michigan pass rusher who tore his Achilles' at his pro day just like Jones did.
Williams is still expected to be a first-round pick while Ojabo could tumble to Round 2.
"For us, with Landon, the timing for that was a little different than the timing for Sidney," Roseman said. "It allowed you to see more the progress of where it was, based on the testing. Two different positions, different injuries.
"So you take that all into account, and the value has to be right – the value for the player, and how we feel the player fits for us."
That likely foreshadows Williams being more of an option for the Eagles than Ojabo.
-John McMullen contributes Eagles coverage for SI.com's Eagles Today and is the NFL Insider for JAKIB Media. You can listen to John, alongside legendary sports-talk host Jody McDonald every morning from 8-10 on ‘Birds 365,” streaming live on YouTube. John is also the host of his own show "Extending the Play" on AM1490 in South Jersey. You can reach him at jmcmullen44@gmail.com or on Twitter @JFMcMullen