A common thread in all the Eagles’ offseason additions, the weird Oren Burks situation, Brett Favre’s miserable stats at the Linc and the hidden value of compensatory draft picks.
Busy week for the Eagles and it’s a busy week for Roob’s 10 Random Eagles Offseason Observations!
1A. Harrison Bryant had a career-low nine catches last year. Joshua Uche has just five sacks in nearly 600 snaps the last two seasons. Adoree’ Jackson has two interceptions in 4,547 snaps in his last 83 games. A.J. Dillon missed last year with a neck injury. Avery Williams missed the 2023 season with a torn ACL. Kenyon Green was the lowest-rated guard in the NFL in both of his two years as a starter, according to Pro Football Focus. Patrick Johnson is an edge rusher with no career sacks in 517 career defensive snaps. Kylen Granson’s catches dropped from 61 in 2002 and 2023 to 14 last year. Dorian Thompson-Robinson has the worst TD-INT ratio in the NFL in the last 40 years. There’s your Eagles offseason haul. When you’re in the position the Eagles are in, this is what you get in free agency. Every single addition has a big, giant question mark attached. Either a drop in production, a serious injury or just a career that never got going. Not one of them is guaranteed a roster spot and not one of them carries a big enough salary cap figure to matter if they don’t make the team. But most of them at some point were pretty highly regarded. Jackson and Green were 1st-round picks, Uche and Dillon were 2nd-round picks, Granson and Bryant 4th-rounders and Avery and DTR 5th-rounders. It’s been hard to watch free agency gut the Eagles’ roster, and most of these guys aren’t going to replace the guys the Eagles lost. But if you take these additions for what they are – zero-risk guys who were once highly regarded and might help this year but won’t affect the cap if they don’t – it all makes sense. A lot of these guys are insurance in case the youngsters – Tyler Steen, Kelee Ringo, Sydney Brown, etc. – don’t pan out. And a big part of adding these sorts of players is trust in an outstanding group of position coaches to get the most out of guys whose careers haven’t gone the way they hoped. Kind of how they jump-started the careers of Mekhi Becton and Zack Baun. Everything to gain, nothing to lose. Considering the cap squeeze the Eagles found themselves in, it’s not a bad haul.
1B. And make no mistake about it: That cap squeeze is a direct result of roster construction that led to a Super Bowl championship. Without salary cap hell, there is no Super Bowl.
2. And if you find the free agency defections concerning, remind yourself that Jordan Mailata, Landon Dickerson, Cam Jurgens, Lane Johnson, Saquon Barkley, A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, Jalen Hurts, Dallas Goedert (for now), Jalen Carter, Jordan Davis, Nolan Smith, Cooper DeJean, Quinyon Mitchell, Reed Blankenship, Zack Baun and Nakobe Dean are all still Eagles. What other team has 17 starters at that level?
3. Oren Burks’ departure surprised me. He’s one guy I thought the Eagles would keep. Unlike the other free agents the Eagles lost, money couldn’t have been a factor – not after he signed with the Bengals for a reported $5 million over two years – and not when losing him doesn’t help as far as comp picks. It’s hard to imagine the Eagles wouldn’t want to match such a small contract, not with Nakobe Dean’s status for the start of next year up in the air and considering how well Burks performed in the postseason after Dean got hurt. There were very specific reasons the Eagles couldn’t re-sign Josh Sweat, Milton Williams, Isaiah Rodgers and Mekhi Becton, but none of those reasons applied to Burks. Possibly, the Eagles just feel really strongly about Jeremiah Trotter Jr., who’s on a rookie 5th-round contract, and they’re good moving forward with Little Trott as the third off-ball linebacker. Without hearing from Burks, who hasn’t spoken to the media yet, maybe he just felt he had a better chance to be a long-term solution with the Bengals, who need a starter next to Logan Wilson, than with the Eagles, who eventually will have Zack Baun and Dean starting. Either way, it’s a significant loss for the Eagles because Burks proved himself both as a starting linebacker on a Super Bowl team and as a very good special teamer. Not a big name like the others, but he will be missed.
4. In the fourth quarter of their four postseason games this year, the Eagles ran the ball 53 times and threw 11 times.
5. Brett Favre had a 50.2 passer rating in four career starts at the Linc, the lowest passer rating ever by an opposing quarterback at Lincoln Financial. Favre was 66-for-134 (49.3 percent) for 687 yards with three touchdowns and seven interceptions in those four starts – all losses. That 49.3 percent completion percentage is also lowest among opposing quarterbacks, as is his interception ratio of one every 19 attempts. His 5.1 yards per attempt was also lowest ever at the Linc. Of those seven interceptions, Brian Dawkins had two – including the overtime pick in the 2003 playoff game – and Michael Lewis also had two. Sheldon Brown, Rod Hood and LaJuan Ramsey had one each. The Linc is the only stadium Favre never won.
6. With Mekhi Becton finally leaving the fold Friday night and signing with the Chargers, the Eagles are sitting at a likely four comp picks for the 2026 draft. That’s a 3rd-round pick for Milton Williams, a 4 for Josh Sweat, a 5 for Becton and a 6 for Isaiah Rodgers, according to Over the Cap’s projection. Four is the maximum number of comp picks a team can receive in one offseason, and the Steelers are the only other team projected to add four comp picks next year as things currently stand. Four picks is a lot, especially with a 3 and a 4 in there, and it’s important to remember that adding these picks was a critical part of Howie Roseman’s plan in losing so many free agents. If you lose a bunch of plus free agents and don’t add any, you can really make the comp pick system work for you. The Eagles now have eight picks in next month’s draft and 12 in 2026, five in the first three rounds. Nobody is better at turning picks into value than Roseman, and having 20 picks over the next two years – eight in the first three rounds – gives Roseman tremendous flexibility. He can use those picks to draft players, trade up on draft weekend or generate more picks with greater long-range value. Roseman has the luxury of being able to play the long game and make moves in 2025 that are designed to help in 2026, 2027 and 2028 because he has unprecedented job security. The Eagles added a bunch of players in the past week, but the real replacements for the guys they’ve lost can be found in the list of draft picks Roseman has in 2025 and 2026.
7. Saquon Barkley already has the 5th-most 100-yard games in Eagles history with 14. In one season. Only Wilbert Montgomery (26), LeSean McCoy (23), Brian Westbrook (20) and Steve Van Buren (19) have more, and they all played at least six seasons here. Barkley “only” had two 100-yard performances the first five games of the season, then had 11 the next 13 games.
8. Last year, 78 guards played at least 300 snaps. Pro Football Focus had Tyler Steen with a 40.7 grade. Only two guards had a lower grade. One of them was Kenyon Green.
9A. Trading Kenny Pickett was a no-brainer. There was no need for both Tanner McKee and Pickett to be on the roster and it would have been awkward to move McKee up to No. 2 and demote Pickett to No. 3. Pickett didn’t play badly last year and didn’t do anything to get demoted, but let’s be honest – if Jalen Hurts has to miss a game, who would you rather have playing? Pickett or McKee? I like the toughness Pickett played with last year finishing the Washington game and starting the Dallas game last year, and he made a few big throws. But McKee is just better. He’s younger and has more upside. He’s got to be No. 2 this year, and the Eagles know that. And that 5th-round pick Howie got back is going to help the Eagles more than Pickett ever would have. And you get a developmental QB in return as well in Dorian Thompson-Robinson, who played for Chip Kelly at UCLA. Trade helps the Eagles, it puts McKee in his rightful spot as No. 2 and it gives Pickett an opportunity to compete for a starting position in Cleveland. Works for everyone.
9B. One footnote to the Pickett trade is that it adds two names to the ridiculous list of quarterbacks who’ve spent time with both the Eagles and the Browns. Here’s who I came up with: Doug Pederson, Kelly Holcombe, Jeff Garcia, Thaddeus Lewis, Ty Detmer, Joe Flacco, Nick Mullens, Brad Goebel, Cody Kessler, Josh McCown, Mark Rypien, Kenny Pickett and Dorian Thompson-Robinson. Anyone else?
10. Mekhi Becton is the first Eagles offensive lineman to start 10 or more games in a season but only spend one year with the Eagles since Jeff Dellenbach 26 years ago. Dellenbach, then 36, started 15 games at right guard for the 1999 Eagles and then retired. The last one to play 10 or more games for the Eagles and then sign with another team was Dennis McKnight, who started 13 games at left guard in 1991 and played for the Lions in 1992.
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