Q. When you look at the off-season overall, how do you feel about how it's gone? In particular the players you've brought back, do you feel last year's team was enough that you wanted to come back with that group?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: I think when you look at it, I look at team building. That's what we're doing right now, we're building. We're not in a go-for-it situation, all-in situation. We have too many resources, we have too many good young players to be like that.
I think when you look at it, you look at it as a foundation. When you're building on a foundation, you don't want to start taking pillars of that foundation off.
I think the most important part of free agency was what we did during the season in signing a left tackle who is 24 years old and a tight end that we think is elite, signing a pass-rusher that's really important to us that's young, including that with signing a slot corner who has tremendous character and we feel like is in a great position to succeed. Then adding in one of the best players to -- two of the best players ever to play for us at important positions we view as part of this free agency.
It was really important for us to get Hassan because it's something we knew we had to improve on. As we talk about team building, we're always talking about the fact that we want to have guys who can rush the quarterback and get after the quarterback. We want to be really strong on the D-line and O-line. We feel like it gives you a head start to your team. It is not the only thing you need, but it's huge part of it.
We looked into a bunch of opportunities. Some of them we felt like weren't the right fit for us, whether from a cost perspective or position perspective. I would say this, we aren't even April. We are working every day. We're not going to stop working. If we don't get something in the draft, there's a depth chart open, we'll work on it after the draft.
The team building does not stop 10 days into free agency. For us, really excited to Kyzir White. That's a real opportunity for us, for him, for us, an opportunity we didn't really think would exist when free agency opened. We're looking for those opportunities every day. We're not sitting there saying, We're done, let's close the book, move on. We're saying, If that's an opportunity to improve our team in free agency by the trades, by the wire.
I think the other part of this is when you have the amount of high picks we have, we don't want to block these players from play time. We don't want to get in a situation when we're drafting guys, sometimes in the first, second, sometimes even the third round, they don't have an ability to play because you're wasting a contract year. That gives us the opportunity to draft guys, allow them to play early in a contract, which we think is an important part of the team building process that we're in.
So I think we put it all together, again, are we going to draft saying we have to get a particular position, which I'm sure you guys can name two or three right now and say, hey, they look like they need this position? We see it, too. We understand.
But I think we look at it kind of the opposite way where if there's an opportunity to do that now, yes, we'll look into that. If there's an opportunity in the draft and the value fits, we'll do that. If not, we're going to circle back.
We'll have opportunities to do that in June, July. I mean, obviously we've done that in the past where we've had opportunities to do it at a position that we wanted to address elsewhere. We had to circle back, whether it was in June, July, August, sometimes at the trade deadline. That's how we kind of look at where we are right now.
Q. Is it fair to say having three first-round picks changes the way you operate in the off-season?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: There's no doubt. You're talking about adding, I mean, three players in the top 20 as opposed to maybe one player in the first 32, or in the first 40. Again, I think it goes back to we'd hate to draft three guys, go redshirt, redshirt, redshirt, you're blocked here, here and here, or get in a situation where we're saying, All right, we have to have that position because the depth chart on my wall said that spot's competitive right now for a starting spot.
You can't just go into free agency and say, All right, we have a particular need at this position. Let's just sign someone there to feel better about it. That guy's not good enough.
So some of the guys that we circle back on, that we brought back in this we felt were positions that those guys do a solid job for us in the role that they have, and it takes some of the pressure off, but it doesn't preclude us from going into the draft and saying, Let's take this position. I don't think there's many positions we'd say that about.
Q. Is the pre-draft process different at all because of those picks, anything tangible that's different in terms of who would fit well together or...
HOWIE ROSEMAN: Well, yeah, I think for us, maybe what we're doing a little bit differently this year is maybe the guys that are clean, we're ensuring they're clean through the Senior Bowl, the combine process, then we're trying to do a lot more work on kind of the top 25 guys in the draft, top 30 guys in the draft, that we feel we got to make sure why guys fail. Guys fail mental, mental concerns, scheme fit, or kind of the adjustment to this level.
We're trying to know as much about those guys, especially the guys that we would consider in the top 20 so that we know if we hit on three guys in the top 20, that's going to be a huge effect on our team. As we go further down the draft, there's more of a risk on those picks anyway.
Knowing what those guys have in their bodies, still doing the work. Zoom has opened up a huge new venue for us to be able to really spend time with guys that we haven't before. That was really our exposure last year. So we have our coaches being able to do that as well, so you get more time with these guys.
I do think having three first-round picks is a different dynamic, having three guys in the first top 20, changes kind of the necessity of somewhat free agency in forcing a veteran player.
Q. How does it not encourage you guys to then try to fill holes in the draft?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: We've got to learn from the mistakes when we force positions, when we get into a situation where we have to have a guy, it doesn't work.
I think you still see in free agency, if we wanted to circle back on some of the positions that maybe people perceive there's need, there's still guys there, a lot of these veteran guys. They're smart enough to go, I'm going to wait to see at the draft, I'm going to see if teams draft these guys, what the best spot for me is, as well.
I think for us, we know there are other opportunities to do it. We don't go into the draft saying, Holy cow, if we don't get this position, the team is going to frigging fall apart this year.
Again, we're building. We're not saying we're putting all our chips in the middle of the table for this year. We want to win. We want to have a really good team. But we also want to do the right things.
Q. How was dinner with (indiscernible)?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: I was not at this dinner.
Q. Where do you stand with Hurts?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: I was at the North Carolina-Pitt game, though.
Q. You started the off-season by endorsing him for the future, then we got through the off-season period here. The draft is still out there. There's still a couple quarterbacks that maybe are tradeable. Is the commitment even more so having gotten through the free agency process?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: I don't know that we've ever wavered from the level of commitment that we've had in Jalen. So I think when we say he's our guy, he's our starter, we believe in him, we got to do whatever we can to help him, give him a chance to reach his potential. I don't think that's changed one bit.
If anything, just talking and hearing kind of his plan to improve and the things that he wants to do. I mean, this guy will explore every option to get better. He will do whatever it takes. So you know you're going to get as much as possible out of him as you can.
So it's our job, let's make sure. I think when you look at our team, there are still ways to improve our team, the people around him. That's on us.
Then you get an opportunity to really judge a quarterback when you see them with as many good players as possible around them, fit in a system that coach has done a great job of, that fits their skill set. I think we're excited. If you would have asked us a year ago, where we are today, I feel like we're in a much, much better position. Excited about the jump.
Q. If you look at the wide receiver market, obviously exploded, you were linked to several wide receivers. There's a narrative that Jalen, because of the offense, because of his age, whatever it may be, that is kind of harping you guys in terms of that market. Would you agree with that? What do you make of the wide receiver market?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: I appreciate you asking the question because it's actually something that I wanted to talk about.
I think when we look at our skill position guys, we look at DeVonta Smith. I'm not speaking out of turn. This is after my conversation with Coach Sirianni, our coaches. Thi sis in lockstep with them.
DeVonta Smith had 118 targets. If I'm wrong on a couple numbers, I apologize. When you look at the players in Coach Sirianni's offense, the number one receivers in the league, you're talking about guys getting a 150 targets. When you're talking about Dallas, Scott, obviously we had Zach, but I think he had 84 targets last year. I think that's the right number.
Guys who are tight ends of his caliber, you're talking about guys that are getting 120 targets a year. Even when you look at Quez, I think he had 60 targets.
We believe, like, in those three guys, specifically the first two guys, that they're going to require, as their skill set continues to get better and better, as they get more comfortable in the offense, they're going to require more targets.
Soy I think when we look at it, we're kind of saying, Can we also satisfy players who are going to try to gobble up a lot of targets when we're trying to satisfy these young players that we think have a chance to be exceptional players in the league?
I'm not trying to not answer your question, but I think for us, we're looking at like, How do we get these guys the ball more? How do we give them more targets? Where does that leave everyone else after that? That doesn't mean we don't use more weapons, more players. We're always looking for that.
I think that's been a big off-season focus, just going back, watching those guys, going, Man, when you talk about guys that can really make a difference in the passing game, in our offense, we have these guys on our offense who are just taking these steps to be at the level that some of the guys that maybe people are talking about in this league being really good are.
Q. From a health perspective with your cap, do you feel your strategy of extending guys out is still working? How would you describe the cap situation overall that you're in?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: Yeah, I think, one, this whole perception of dead money is something that we would -- I think it would be something that we would have kind of a different interpretation on. I think for us, when we look at it, you are taking the money no matter what on these guys. So first you got to be right on the evaluation of the player. Obviously that's the most important thing here. Have we been perfect on our extensions? No, obviously not. We traded a player with a big-money cap hit last year. We signed him early. That's just one example. I'm sure you guys can give me a couple examples.
But I almost look at it the same way as we would look in the draft. If we're signing five guys early, and we're hitting on four of those five guys on those deals, and saving money by doing them early, we're going to do that every time. Like, that makes too much sense.
Again, we're playing the odds. If you're hitting on three, again, you're playing the odds, saving a lot of money, you're being able to build your team. If we're going two for five, we got to look at that. That's not going to be the hit rate we're looking for.
I've looked at it. I don't see us in that range. I see that we are hitting on most of the signs we do when we're doing that, the veteran guys, because we know these guys. We know their work ethic. We know what's in their body. We know how they fit in our scheme.
Again, not perfect on those, but feel good about doing those early.
In terms of our cap strategy, it was affected by the pandemic, right? If the pandemic didn't happen, we were thinking one of the reasons that we were so aggressive with Slay and Hargrave was because we felt like the cap was going to go up, we definitely did not think there was going to be a pandemic in this world. My fault, definitely my bad. That kind of set us back a little.
I think you talk to people around here, you know, I think coming out of '17 and '18, we tried to be aggressive. We knew at some point we were going to have to take a step back, we were going to pay it. I would do that a hundred times out of a hundred times. If you said to me, In the next five years we're going to go to the playoffs four of the five years, win one world championship, then have a horrible, shitty year, would I sign up for that? Yes, where do I sign right now? Bobby, you good with that? You good with that?
We knew at some point we were going to have to pay the price on that. I'm proud that I feel like we got it kind of back-situated. I'm not telling you we're perfect, but we got it back-situated with our resources, our situation going forward.
I think in terms of what we're doing from the cap, I think from our perspective, it's no different - I steal this from Bryce, our cap guy, I'm not taking ownership of it - but it's no different when you're buying a house, right? If you have the opportunity to buy a house and put all the cash down or the interest rates are really good and you're going to pay it over time, why wouldn't you use that money now and understand that as it goes forward you're going to be able to do that?
When we're sitting there, we're going, It's the same money, right? If I give somebody $10, and I decide to pro rate it, it's the same amount of $10, it's going to affect my cap the same way. If I'm doing it where the value of the cap is not $100, but now is $150, why wouldn't I want to take it in those times?
For me, I don't really understand, and obviously these guys just tell me, There's this whole hubbub about it. The cap is a factor. There's no doubt about it. Dead money is a factor. But dead money is always the pro ration you have on guys anyway, and it's all the same amount of money, it's just when you choose to do it.
For our perspective, we felt like the way the cap is going to go going forward, it made sense to have the option to take it in future years. We know that it can come forward whenever we want.
I don't view it probably in the same realm that it's at least been portrayed to me, but obviously it's just been portrayed because, with all due respect, unless they tell me to look at something, I'm not looking at it. Sometimes other people tell me to look at something, then Bob gets mad, then I get mad at all of you. It's a whole circle of anger (laughter).
Q. Teams being more willing to trade first-round picks, do you think that market has changed at all? Do you think having three changes your guys' flexibility?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: I think that three definitely changes the flexibility, for sure, the openness and willingness to do things. I also think if everyone is doing the same thing, you're probably not getting any competitive advantages.
What we're trying to find time doing is, Why do teams win? Teams win because they have great, great players, usually at the quarterback position, or they're doing something that people aren't doing.
I feel like we kind of hit into both those things when we won in '17. Both our quarterbacks played like MVPs. One played like an MVP, the other took the baton and played like an MVP. We also kind of did something different than we had done in the past with trading picks, for rookie players. We're spends a lot of time going, All right, how can we zig when they're zagging? We don't want to the narrative that everyone else is because you're buying into an overvalued market.
We're trying to kind of look at those things to be different. I think it's okay to be different.
Q. Can I ask you about Barnett?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: Yes, for sure.
Q. We haven't seen the numbers yet. You're bringing him back as a reserve clearly. Is that what factored into it?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: I think what factored into it is that I think perception of Derek is probably not there with the reality. He's a guy that if we were looking at a different team, you'd go 26-year-old defensive end coming off his not best year, we'd kind of look at that and go, All right, maybe that's an opportunity. Obviously playing temperament is ideal, fits Philly, understands the perception of him and the thousand untimely moments.
But this is a guy who certainly contributes to a great defensive line. We've seen it with us. I think going into free agency probably he thought a little differently about where he would be. For us understanding that's where he was thinking. It got to a point where it's a huge priority to us to have a wave defensive line that's really good. We know we can count on him.
Obviously it's a position we want to continue to add to. We don't want to make a strength a weakness. I think last year it obviously wasn't a position we wanted. Now you get this and you add Hassan as a rusher, you have BG back in a rusher, you add him. Obviously we still got the draft. We just thought it fit and it made sense.
Q. (No microphone.)
HOWIE ROSEMAN: I feel like the guy loves football. Our team feels a different way about it. If you go around the building and ask people about Derek Barnett, you ask our players, our strength coach, our position coach, our head coach, coordinators, they go, I love Derek Barnett. I love how he plays, his mentality, I love his work ethic, his leadership. I think for us, we see it differently than just that.
Again, I think going to free agency probably had a perception of what it was going to be. It was a marriage.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports