Believe it or not, Howie Roseman has been Eagles' offseason MVP

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Howie Roseman has been MVP of the Eagles’ offseason.

Seriously.

And the Sam Bradford deal only cemented it. 

It’s been two months since the Eagles’ second front office shuffle in 12 months. Two months since Howie Roseman, humiliated a year earlier in that unforgettably awkward press release as overseeing the equipment department, was restored to power. Two months since owner Jeff Lurie took dramatic action to try to return the Eagles to respectability.

The Howie story is one of the strangest in Philly sports history. It really is. Has any other GM been stripped of his power, essentially fired, but stayed with his team in some vague undefined role, then had his power fully restored?

I’m guessing no. I’m guessing it’s never happened. And I’m also guessing that if it had has happened, the revived GM did not have as impressive a first two months as Howie has had.

He’s actually been great.

Now, in a way, none of this should be all that surprising. My criticisms of Howie have always been regarding his work on the scouting and player drafting end of things and not with his work on contracts, draft-day trades and salary cap.

I’m still hopeful Lurie finds a strong personnel guy to run scouting, and Roseman can stick to what he does best: Crafting contracts that veterans can’t resist signing that simultaneously make sense under the Eagles’ salary cap.

Not as easy as you might think.

And for Roseman to get Zach Ertz, Lane Johnson, Brent Celek, Vinny Curry, Malcolm Jenkins and now Sam Bradford to agree to contracts in the span of 37 days?

That’s huge. You don’t see any other teams making this many significant moves before free agency even starts.

Not only do these moves help stock the roster with solid players who want to be here and already have a connection to the city, they help continue the process of un-Chipping the roster. 

The last two years the Eagles made news by getting rid of good players. Now they’re making news by keeping good players. And it’s crucial for the other guys on the roster to see this and understand it and know that if they produce on the field, they will be taken care of. And not released. Or traded to the Bills for a hobbled linebacker.

What’s really impressive is that Howie designed all these contracts within the restrictions of the Eagles’ 2016 salary cap limitations. Roseman got agents to accept team-friendly deals in just about every case.

And Bradford?

A two-year deal is a really fair and sensible compromise for the Eagles, who aren’t committed beyond 2017 if Bradford turns out to not be the guy we saw the last half of last year, and also fair for Bradford, who gets a ton of guaranteed money even while his options outside Philly were dwindling.

It’s important to not understate Doug Pederson’s role in everything that’s happened since he was hired on Jan. 18. Pederson has been vocal about what he wants as far as personnel and this has been as much about Roseman giving Pederson the tools he’s asked for as Roseman having a singular vision of his own for the franchise.

There’s more. I think there’s something deeper that went on here the last month and a half, and it showed a profound understanding of what was missing during the Chip Kelly era.

After three years with a head coach who was distant and difficult and never let his players feel appreciated or wanted, Roseman went into this whole offseason period determined to make all these guys — Curry, Bradford and Fletcher Cox too — feel wanted. Feel important.

There’s a notion that Roseman was too effusive in his public praise of Bradford and that he gave Bradford leverage by repeatedly making it clear just how much the Eagles wanted him back.

I look at it the other way. It’s all part of undoing the damage left behind by Kelly. There’s a good chance if Kelly had expressed how much he wanted Jeremy Maclin back this time a year ago that Maclin would be an Eagle right now. But he didn’t. And Maclin is a Chief, and they can’t have him back.

So Roseman has gone out of his way to tell these guys, “Hey, we want you to be an Eagle.”

And it certainly hasn’t hurt. Turns out making this guys feel wanted is an effective strategy.

It’s easy to dismiss Roseman because of Danny Watkins and Marcus Smith. It’s easy to dismiss Roseman because of that unfortunate press release that said he would be “overseeing the team’s medical staff, equipment staff and more.” It’s easy to dismiss Roseman because a year ago he got fired. It’s easy to dismiss Roseman for a lot of reasons.

He’s gotten a second chance to show he can run a franchise, and the results so far are very encouraging. The Eagles have re-signed their two most critical free agents, their best pass rusher and their quarterback, and they’ve gotten a terrific young tight end, an important veteran tight end, a talented young offensive tackle and a Pro Bowl safety under new contracts.

How will it all come together? Who knows. It’s still only early March. 

But it’s clear the Eagles have already undone a lot of the damage left behind by Chip.

This has become a place people want to stay and not a place people want to leave. 

Thanks in great part, oddly enough, to a guy who got fired a year ago.

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