The Eagles went into the draft with an eye on linebacker Jeremiah Trotter Jr. and General Manager Howie Roseman was able to snag the former Clemson star in the fifth round.
Roseman’s interest was tied to Trotter’s father, who is a member of the Eagles’ Hall of Fame after spending eight years in Philadelphia during three different stints with the club. The younger Trotter wore his father’s No. 54 while at Clemson and hopes to do the same with the Eagles, but he said he plays a different style and that he doesn’t feel a burden to live up to his father’s accomplishments in the NFL.
“Honestly, for me I didn’t feel like there was any pressure,” Trotter said after being drafted, via a transcript from the team. “My dad would always talk to me and say there is no pressure. ‘You’re your own player, your own man. You have your own you journey.’ We’re different, as far as how we play the game. And I just got to go out there and be me, use the tools that God blessed me with and use them to the best of my ability and try to be the best player I can be as an individual. I don’t feel like there is any pressure to live up to his legacy or anything. I don’t feel like there is a weight on my back. I’m just trying to get to work and just be the best I can be.”
The Eagles have Nakobe Dean and Devin White at linebacker as well, so Trotter will have to earn a spot on defense before anyone will have to worry about whether he has the same kind of impact that his dad had for the team.
Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown’s press conference on Tuesday was focused on his contract extension, but other topics came up during his time on the podium.
One of them was a phone call Brown made to Philly radio station WIP in February to refute speculation that there were problems in the team’s locker room that led to their second half collapse last season and that Brown had specific issues with quarterback Jalen Hurts. Brown called the Hurts speculation “total BS” and was adamant that he wanted to be part of the team.
The new contract means Brown will be around for years to come and he said on Tuesday that he is working on doing a better job of letting outside noise pass him by without a response.
“At the time, I felt like that was right,” Brown said. “But looking back on it, it’s something I learned from. I’m learning to let people just have their opinions and just keep on pushing. I’m human. That’s something I can’t control. I can’t control when somebody talks about me or comes up with these things. It’s something that I learned from and I’m moving forward.”
The rapid descent from top of the NFC to out of the playoffs provided plenty of Eagles talking points at the end of last season. Avoiding that kind of meltdown will help Brown and everyone else on the roster avoid the kind of interactions Brown engaged in earlier this year.
Former NFL linebacker Bill Romanowski has filed for bankruptcy after he was sued by the Department of Justice for $15.5 million in unpaid federal taxes.
Romanowski and his wife Julie are defendants in a civil case brought by the federal government, which alleges that the Romanowskis used their supplement company Nutrition53 to get around paying taxes, a bill that has now topped $15.5 million, according to USA Today.
The Department of Justice says the Romanowskis improperly used Nutrition53 accounts to pay for their personal rent, groceries, veterinarian bills and “over 170 visits to nail salons, hair salons and day spas.”
Nutrition53 filed for bankruptcy last year.
The 58-year-old Romanowski played for the 49ers, Eagles, Broncos and Raiders during a 16-year NFL career. He won four Super Bowl rings and was selected to two Pro Bowls. He was also repeatedly fined for dirty play, and sued by teammate Marcus Williams for an injury during a fight on the practice field. After retiring, Romanowski admitted he had used steroids during his playing career.
Free agent running back Boston Scott has agreed to a one-year deal with the Rams, Adam Schefter of ESPN reports.
The Rams now have Kyren Williams, Blake Corum and Scott in their running backs room.
Scott bid farewell to the Eagles in a social media post.
The Eagles signed Scott off the Saints’ practice squad in 2018 after New Orleans drafted him in the sixth round that year. By the next season, Scott had become a regular contributor to the Eagles.
He played 75 games with 12 starts in his six seasons in Philadelphia, getting 373 touches for 1,861 yards and 17 touchdowns.
Before the Eagles started adding rookies to their roster last week, they took care of some business with one of their veteran players.
They signed wide receiver A.J. Brown to a three-year, $96 million extension that made him the NFL’s best-paid wideout. It was the second contract Brown has signed with the Eagles since the 2022 trade that brought him to Philadelphia and Brown said at a Tuesday press conference that he hopes to play the rest of his career for the Eagles.
Brown also said that moving to the top of the salary list for receivers isn’t going to change anything about how he approaches the game.
“Nothing. I want to prove it. It’s a blessing, I can say, but we don’t play on paper. Nobody cares what’s in the bank account when you step between the lines,” Brown said.
Brown’s partner in the receiving corps Devonta Smith also signed a contract extension with the Eagles this offseason and Brown said “the sky’s the limit” for what the duo will be able to do over their time together in the offense. If that’s the case, both investments will be well worth it.
One of the biggest mistakes that NFL teams can make in the draft is to reach for a player because he fills a position of need, drafting him higher than his talent justifies in a desperate attempt to find a Day One impact player. That’s a mistake that Eagles General Manager Howie Roseman says he won’t make.
So when the Eagles used their first round pick on cornerback Quinyon Mitchell, and their second-round pick on cornerback Cooper DeJean, that wasn’t about thinking cornerback was a position they had to bolster. Roseman told Rich Eisen that it was simply a matter of drafting the best players on their board when the opportunity arose.
“We don’t change our evaluations based on need, and I think with the way the board fell, with the offensive players going, with the quarterbacks going, it fell nicely for us,” Roseman said. “We felt like we were going to sit and get a pretty good player.”
Roseman said cornerback was a position the Eagles were glad to improve, but they wouldn’t have done it if the right players weren’t there at the right time.
“It kind of met needs and evaluations,” Roseman said.
Although there was plenty of talk before the draft that the Eagles might move up in the first round, Roseman said the Eagles had 24 players with first-round grades and knew at least a few would be there with the 22nd pick, so they liked what the could get by staying put.
“It didn’t make a lot of sense for us to move up and use draft capital to do it,” Roseman said.
When it was first reported that ESPN is pursuing former Eagles center Jason Kelce, the spot of Robert Griffin III was described as being “in jeopardy.”
In today’s report that Kelce is in, Andrew Marchand of TheAthletic.com characterized Griffin’s return as “unlikely.”
Nothing has been announced.
For his part, Griffin welcomed Kelce to the team on Monday. So maybe he’ll be back. Or maybe they just haven’t told him yet.
Regardless, Kelce is in on Monday nights this fall. Some thought he’d end up in a booth somewhere. Maybe he’ll wait for one of the prime spots to come open.
The Eagles drafted nine players in Detroit and they’ll be signing some undrafted players, so they created some space on the roster for newcomers on Monday.
The NFL’s daily transaction report brings word that they have waived defensive tackle Noah Elliss, wide receiver Griffin Hebert, defensive back Tiawan Mullen, and offensive lineman Lecitus Smith. The team also officially announced the previously reported signing of tackle Mekhi Becton.
Smith is the only one of the four cut players who has regular season experience, although it did not come with the Eagles. Smith appeared in 10 games and made two starts for the Cardinals in 2022.
The Eagles will hold their rookie minicamp this weekend and more roster moves could come after their first chance to work with this year’s rookie class.
There was a report last month that former Eagles center Jason Kelce might be going to work for ESPN as part of their Monday night team and it appears the deal is done.
Andrew Marchand of TheAthletic.com reports that Kelce has agreed to a job with the network. He will be on the Monday Night Countdown pregame show in his first role since retiring from the Eagles at the end of the season.
The earlier report about Kelce moving to ESPN included word that Robert Griffin III will no longer be part of the show. Marchand’s report on Monday still notes that he is “unlikely” to be back.
Kelce met with multiple broadcasters after announcing his retirement and he will also continue the New Heights podcast that he does with his brother Travis as he moves into the his post-playing days.
In the new era of college football, it’s easy for talented players at small schools to transfer to big programs and make significant NIL money. Quinyon Mitchell chose not to.
Mitchell, whom the Eagles drafted out of Toledo with the 22nd pick in the draft, would have been a hot prospect in the transfer portal a year ago, but he says he didn’t want to go anywhere else because he loved his coaches and teammates at Toledo, where he played his entire four-year college career.
“Money and other opportunities, they’re just not bigger than relationships,” Mitchell told NBCSportsPhiladelphia.com. “The relationships I had at Toledo were so strong. That’s why I stayed. I love those guys, I love everybody in the organization. It’s just the relationships.”
Nick Saban — who cited the transfer portal and NIL as reasons he retired from Alabama this year — said on the draft broadcast that he wanted Mitchell to transfer to Alabama, but Mitchell had no interest.
“He was our No. 1 guy in the portal last year to try to get him to come out of the portal,” Saban said, “and he would never get in the portal.”
Mitchell showed that you can still get picked in the first round from outside the power conferences, and he’ll make plenty of money in the NFL after turning money down last year.