Q. Kelce called Cam Jurgens his favorite player in the Draft, and that he's been watching centers the last couple years for you. Can you explain that relationship and what that's been like?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: Yeah, you know when Kelce came back, as you know being obviously we don't know, this is a year-to-year thing with Jason and just very, very fortunate every year that we get Jason Kelce as a player, and whenever he decides not play anymore, which hopefully is a long time down the line, he can help us in any way he wants.
And he said, "Hey, I love the Draft process." We gave him a few offensive lineman. And because Kelce is here working out all the time and they are here during Top-30 visits and we do performance stuff with them. Cam comes in my office and he goes, "I just got to meet Jason Kelce, he's awesome."
And I said, "Yeah, he's awesome."
You know, Kelce saw all the same things that we saw. We think Cam has got a chance to be a very special player in this offense. And I said to Kelce, "You know, Jason, we have this, like, unbelievable opportunity for a guy who is really talented to learn from the best who has ever done it here."
And I said, "You know, I don't know if it's perfect analogy but it's almost like Aaron Rodgers had the opportunity to learn behind Brett Favre and then the Packers basically had this like 25 years of elite play at the quarterback position.
For the Philadelphia Eagles, for us, having elite play at the center position, it's important. We felt like this guy, he was different than the centers who have come out the last couple years. We think he has a chance to be really, really good and getting to learn from the best ever. We thought was a way for him to be even better.
And so whether we were on the clock in the second round, these guys will tell you, we had two players, it was Cam and it was Nakobe Dean. And unfortunately for our fans at the time, you know, I'm always going to go O-Line, D-Line, that's how we roll. That's how we build this thing.
So we went through it and I looked around and everyone loved Cam Jurgens. So it was lie, I remember, I looked at Coach and I said to Andy, and I said, we good?
And they know, we're consistent if nothing else. And then we just paced, you know, for a long time.
We know that people had some concerns but Nakobe Dean is going to be on the field this week when we have rookie mini-camp. We had a thorough exam of Nakobe and this guy played in the SEC and sure, you know, you get bumps and bruises in the SEC.
But all the things that he has are things that he's going to play football for the Philadelphia Eagles. There's no surgery scheduled. We feel very fortunate that he was there in the third round and very excited to get him.
Q. What are some of the traits you liked about him?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: All of the things that he has are things he's going to play football with for the Philadelphia Eagles. So there's no surgery scheduled. We feel very fortunate that he was there in the third round and very excited to get him?
Q. What were the traits you liked about Cam Jurgens?
ANDY WEIDL: The athletic ability, the explosiveness, the range and mentality he played with. Then we got to know him and got to know the person and the leadership and the presence he had and the fit, it was a comfort level with all of that.
But you see it. You see it on tape and get out and run and work on the second level and displace people at the line of scrimmage in run blocking, and just the mentality and the finish and all the things that we like that our offensive lineman do, we saw in Cam.
Q. How about as far as making calls at the line? Did he do a lot of that in Nebraska, calling out the defense?
ANDY WEIDL: He did. He's a very intelligent guy, former tight end, very good athlete, three year-starter at center, and excellent athlete in high school as well.
Real intelligent guy. He's capable of making the calls. We have a comfort level with his football intelligence.
NICK SIRIANNI: He's all ball, and he showed us that when he's here on a visit. He's all ball. He eats it, sleeps it, dreams it, everything. So we are super confident in that.
Q. I want to get back to Nakobe Dean. You mentioned whatever injuries or ailments he has, he can play with them. Are those things you're concerned about getting worse that could then result in a surgery or him missing significant time?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: Did you say illness?
Q. Ailments.
HOWIE ROSEMAN: No. There's no concern about that from us.
Q. He has a pec strain, right?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: He has a pec injury that does not require surgery from our doctor.
He's going to be on the field this weekend. We don't anticipate missed time now. He'll come in here and take a physical, and we'll double-check all those things.
Listen, I think I called our doctors three, four times to see am I missing something? We brought him in, am I missing something? Because obviously this guy is way higher on our board, and we are considering taking him. We talked to him before today because he was a consideration, and that's what we got.
I know we exchanged -- we get a lot of information on these guys. It isn't just the Philadelphia Eagles information. We get a lot of information. That's how this rolls. Teams don't do this in a vacuum. They do it with other teams because it's important for these guys to get them right. We are excited about it.
I think just talking to teams after we picked, he was coming. It was coming off. Like if we didn't take him, he was gone.
Q. Just to clarify, you didn't think that other teams pushed him back because of the medical?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: No, I think they clearly did. This is a unique player. Teams did. For us, we obviously didn't have that many picks. We had three, I guess three for three rounds, I guess that's consistent with kind of how the Draft goes, but like I said, in the second round, those are the two guys that we were deciding between, and, you know, we picked because of how we build this team inside out. We got lucky.
Q. Do you think it was the pec injury that was holding other teams off or something else?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: That's what it sounds like. I can only talk to what we have. And again, yeah, he'll be on the field. Can't wait. And I will tell you, talking to Nakobe tonight, you're going to have to hold his ass back.
Q. Have you ever drafted a player or seen it where you've brought a non-quarterback in where you have someone who is an established veteran that you want him to learn from specifically? Have you ever seen that before? This Kelce/Jurgens seems pretty unique.
HOWIE ROSEMAN: That happens a lot at the quarterback position?
Q. But other positions?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: When you talk about being a center, that is like the quarterback position. We feel like if you have an opportunity for the importance that that plays for us, that you have an opportunity to learn from the best who has ever done it and who is welcoming that, of course this guy has unique traits.
He was, in our mind, very, very worthy of the pick where we took him. You know, those guys are hard to find. They are not in every Draft. Like this guy, shout-out to our offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland. This guy, he's unusual. He's unusual.
I know when we brought Stout in and we were talking about it before we made the pick, and we said Stout -- and, you know, you guys will talk to him. This guy is unusual, and that's why we liked him.
Q. How unusual is it to involve a player in the evaluation process?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: Kelce, obviously we have high respect for him, but we had him there. We are not giving Kelce a guy that we had in the seventh round and bringing him to the second round. It was consistent with our evaluations. I think it's because he's passionate in what he does, and we have a tremendous amount of respect for him.
You guys see it with some of our players who are around, whether it's Connor, who has done a tremendous job for us, or Celek or Darren Sproles helps with our player development. I think we have a line out the door now of our players on our team who think they are working after here.
But we love it because these guys have tremendous passion and they know what it is to be a Philadelphia Eagle and they know what it takes to play in this city. Like for us, it's no different than having all the evaluations of the coaches and the scouts. It's guys who know what they are doing and what they are looking at.
NICK SIRIANNI: I don't think it's all that different, too, than what happens in a game plan, right. You bring in guys that you trust, because this Draft process is so much like when you game plan, right. It's over the course of a year; we're over the course of a week, 17 times, as a coaching staff, but it's the same thing when we go through it.
We are listening to Jason Kelce's evaluation of what the blitz is like, what do you want to do here on this look, are you thinking like, hey, we want inside zone off of this look right here out of this formation, what do you think, Jason, right.
I look at it very similar to that, like you trust your players that are really smart. You listen to those players. And it's just part of the evaluation process, and it happens, and it happens in game planning as well.
Q. What about Nakobe has you fired up?
NICK SIRIANNI: Again, I think I've said this 50 times in the sense, what are we looking for in players? We are looking for high character guys, we are looking for guys that are tough, we are looking for guys that have high football IQ?
And he checks every single one of those boxes, right, and competitive, that's the last one. He checks every one of those boxes. He's a leader on the field for Georgia. His football IQ is so high. His instincts are so high.
You know, that's just been my experience with players, too, that guys with high -- that are highly instinctive they just find a way to make plays over and over and over and over again, and that's -- and it's just so hard not to get, I mean, excited about it. You right there. I think you need to get a little more excited back there, all right, about this. Yeah, you.
It's exciting. This guy, he loves ball. I mean, you can't get around guys like that, and Cam is the same way. And we have two guys that fit it -- that fit exactly what we want as Eagles. You see the excitement in our coaches. Shane was texting me, "Hey, Cam is still on the board." Gannon is texting me, "Nakobe is still on the board."
"Let Howie work, I got it."
We are so excited. I can't even begin to tell you how excited we are. Hopefully you feel it in my presentation.
HOWIE ROSEMAN: Both of us went down, as you know, Adam and Phil, they spent their whole fall down there, it's like one-stop shopping down there. You go to practice, you go to a game, you go visit that facility, and you're just going, shoot, I'll draft this whole team.
It's a great credit to their program and what they have done. You start talking about the guys because you knew guys were going to go higher in this Draft than them, and everyone down there is like this player is this, this player is that, and to a man they are like, don't forget Nakobe Dean. Don't forget Nakobe Dean and what he means to this football team.
I think when we were discussing it, whether it was the second round or third round or in our Draft meetings, all of us are reminding each other, let's not forget this guy. He's a really good player. And there may be guys with better measurables, but this guy played at the highest level, and he was the heartbeat of that team.
Having Jordan and him together I think is great for both of them, too. It's like Kelce and Cam.
NICK SIRIANNI: Let me say one other thing, too, because all I said was off-the-field intangibles. These guys are stud football players, too. Like let's not forget that as well. I didn't even mention that, shoot, and that's the most important thing.
Q. Two years of this partnership together, last year you take two players from the offensive and national champion and this year you take two players from the defense. Is that intentional?
NICK SIRIANNI: Oh, supposed to wear those rings with Jordan Davis.
HOWIE ROSEMAN: I think experience is a great teacher. Sometimes, it's like, it's not that hard. Great players, great school, high recruits, play at the highest level, it kind of works.
You want winners. You want guys who have done it. We were joking, Coach is joking, because I don't know if you guys saw when Jordan is walking around, his ring looks bigger than anyone's I've ever seen. He's wearing it around like that.
And these guys know what it takes, and I think that the NFL season, it's a roller coaster ride, it's the ups and downs, and you have guys that when you're down are going to help bring you back up, and those guys that are champions know what happens when adversity hits and how to raise the level of everyone. That's what team is all about.
NICK SIRIANNI: Even when you're 2-5.
HOWIE ROSEMAN: For us that was a huge learning experience for us this year, who's with us. We know those guys are going to be with us. And so, yeah, it's intentional. It's intentional to get winners. It's intentional.
Q. Are you comfortable with where you are from an inventory perspective tomorrow?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: No. I mean, I'd love to have ten picks tomorrow.
You know, that's not fun. I think that in the second round it was a little bit less action.
It's kind of funny because I realized this after the second round. A couple years, there had been a lull in the second round with trade activity and then it picks up again.
And then in the third round it heated up a little bit and we had to make a decision. We had to make a decision there like, yeah, man, we'd love to have some more volume, but would we regret passing on this guy and how long we waited? And just looking around the room and how everyone felt about this guy, it was like, yeah, we could get a couple more picks. But as you get later in the Draft, you don't know about the quality, and we had belief about the guys we picked.
We had more opportunities in the third round to move back, but at that point we felt it was a really good value to take the player, and the second round it wasn't that much.
There was a little bit of a run in the second round of position, and I think people were getting on that run, and then it kind of stalled a little bit.
But I'm very happy to take Cam, and that wasn't like a reach on our board, and that wasn't like anything that we were kind of like, oh, who are we going to take now. That guy stuck out.
Yes, we would love more picks, but I told Coach and went and saw the scouts in the Draft room, and I said we have the best undrafted free agency in the history of undrafted free agency, and lucky for us there's like 700 more players in this Draft. We have coaches in the staff -- who, who -- I'm like not yet. Hold the energy.
We think we have guys we are going to get after the Draft that are going to be on our front board, and those are going to be extra picks, and we are hopeful some of the guys we would have considered in the sixth and seventh round, we get there.
From our perspective, we're missing a fourth round pick and a sixth round pick, right. But we also got an extra player in this Draft because of those picks.
Q. You mentioned Stout with Cam a little bit. Can you take us into the process, and Nick as well, where the coaches come in, Coach came in late, but how much import he had on getting Cam?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: Coaches come in after the season, hopefully that's as late as possible, and really around -- for us after the playoffs, which is around Senior Bowl time. Andy and his staff give a list of guys that we like. We don't give them guys that we're not high on so that we start in a different process, and then they grind them.
Coach and his staff, they love this process and they love being part of it. And so they have guys and we include them and we listen to their opinions and we put it as part of the process and we make are all kind of talking it through.
And obviously we have a tremendous amount of respect for Coach Stoutland and he's part of this process, just like a lot of our coaches here, all of our coaches here. And he's got a track record. And luckily we really see things through his eyes.
And he's been here for a long time, and so we kind of know what he's looking for, and we try to give him players like that. And you can kind of predict who he's going to really like. You know that. What was it, about a week into the Draft process, Coach and I were in my office, and maybe Andy even was in there, and Stout is like -- he's like, "I got one. I got one."
"Who do you got, Stout?"
He gave us, like, second round pick.
"We're like, no, no, he's going to go pretty high."
He's like, "I don't know where these guys go, I just grade them."
Jeff, what do you got? Don't throw your pencil at me.
Q. Do you think you'll be able to address the secondary from here on out?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: I think every team is going to have a hole at some spot after this Draft. We got between now and September and hopefully we're able to add guys.
But if we would have taken a guy in the secondary over a better player like that Nakobe or Cam on our board, it would have been a reach, and you guys would have been saying we were reaching. So we just have to do what the boards tells us what we can do.
Unfortunately for us, we're picking where we are picking, and we made some trades up, and we understand that we'll have work to do after this Draft. We weren't thinking we were coming out here and everything would be perfect and every position will be perfect, but we'll work our ass off to make sure the team is as good as it possibly can be.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports