Howie Roseman: Joe Douglas Will Run Personnel Department
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) —Howard Roseman, the Eagles' executive vice president of football operations, spoke to the media for the first time on Wednesday touching on numerous areas, in general.
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But what stood out is the trust Roseman seems he will be placing from Joe Douglas, the Eagles' new vice president of player personnel who helped build the Baltimore Ravens into becoming two-time Super Bowl champions, and with Andy Weidl, assistant director of player personnel, who Douglas took along with him.
Roseman also stressed something slightly different message than the rest of what the Eagles were espousing this week, which was "We have a lot of work to do," as opposed to what coach Doug Pederson and the players were saying earlier in the week about "being close" to becoming a playoff team.
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Roseman thanked the fans, but followed with, "obviously, the results weren't satisfactory to all of us."
Roseman said the goal is to build around rookie quarterback Carson Wentz and all-Pro defensive tackle Fletcher Cox.
"Bringing Joe Douglas here, with his insight and his leadership, and his ability to lead the draft room, his ability to put the free agent board together, we think is going to be a huge addition to this staff," Roseman said. "He's already put together what we're looking for in players he thinks he can bring to this team, and we can't wait to see what he has in store for us moving forward.
Douglas "has made a huge addition to the building. The first he did was bring in Andy Weidl, who speaks the same language. He has tremendous presence. He has a way of looking at and evaluating players that is different than what we did in the past. Quite frankly, we needed that. He is involved in every discussion we have about building this team. I think we'll start seeing dividends, we start seeing them with our waiver cuts and I think we'll continue seeing them as we go through the offseason."
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Roseman is excited about Wentz's future, and he said he liked how Pederson kept the team together through the adversity the team faced.
"It's never satisfactory when we're sitting here at press conference in January, but the reality is we made this decision to trade up for the quarterback, we're going to build around him," Roseman said. "When we resigned Fletch, we have a 25-year-old we can build around, and we're going to stick with our plan."
