from MMQB: Eagles on their side of the Goff, Wentz trade-ups

from http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2017/03/06/myles-garrett-combine-cleveland-browns-nfl-draft

Albert Breer

Last Friday, Eagles EVP of football operations Howie Roseman joined me on my podcast, and we went deep into the process of identifying a quarterback in the draft, and positioning yourself to get there. Here are a couple snippets…

• On where the process on Carson Wentz was at the combine last year: “We were picking 13th with no second-round pick. We knew we wanted to move up. It was clear to us, with the research we had done, the tape we watched, being able to go to the Senior Bowl and see him throw live and interview him, that we knew we wanted to move up. And the first step? This is like the winter meetings for us, getting us all together. This is where trades take shape.

And we came here with the intent of trying to move up in the draft. And when we started to talk to teams that were picking 1 and 2, it was daunting to them to move back to 13 when we didn’t have a 2. So we kind of then went to this 5-10 range and said, “Maybe we can make two moves. Maybe we can get into that 5-10 range, and be appealing to the teams at 1 and 2.” And say, “Alright, now you don’t have to move back as far, let’s find a way to make this happen.”

• Was there an Oh, crap moment when the Rams acquired the pick you were trying to get: “If an ‘Oh, crap’ moment means getting the news and walking out of the draft room and taking a moment to yourself, then yeah, I think there was an ‘Oh, crap’ moment there. It was, ‘We gotta figure this out.’ And then the conversations were the same with the Browns. If we’re gonna do this, we’re not gonna do it on draft day. We want to understand where we’re at and what we have to do, and working with the Browns to figure out a solution.

That was the definition of a win-win trade for both teams. They get picks that keep on coming, certainly picks in this draft and still have a 2 coming next year. So the price of admission was high, but for us, we felt it was the only to build it the way we saw fit, to build it around a quarterback that we thought could be here for a long time.

It’s interesting, because one of the compelling things for us to make the trade, because it was so many picks, was looking at the teams that drafted quarterbacks in 2004. You may say, why are you looking at teams that drafted quarterbacks in 2004? What’s interesting is those teams—the Giants, the Steelers and the Chargers—are still drafting around those quarterbacks in 2017.”