Eagles GM Howie Roseman On What Happened While Trying To Call Makai Lemon

Howie Roseman has been doing this for 26 NFL seasons, and he still found a way to lose his cool inside the Eagles draft room. The reason, he told Rich on The Rich Eisen Show, was Mekhi Garner's voicemail.

The Eagles GM walked through the Garner pick with a grin and a confession. Philadelphia and Dallas had finalized the trade quickly, with about six minutes left on the clock. That, Roseman said, was the easy part. The Eagles had done the groundwork in advance and only needed to lock the final terms. Six minutes is a comfortable cushion when you know who you want.

What happened next was new territory.

Roseman started calling the player to give him the news. The phone went to voicemail. He called again. Nothing. He called the agent. He could not get him either. The clock kept moving. The room had a pick to turn in. And the GM, in his own words, went somewhere dark.

"I went to a place where it's like, you know, we better find out where this guy is," Roseman said.

With roughly three minutes left, Garner finally picked up. Crisis averted. Pick submitted. New Eagles cornerback in the building.

Rich pushed on the obvious question. Why does a GM need to hear the player's voice before turning in the card? Why not just send the card up and call him afterward?

Roseman did not pretend it was anything fancy.

"The world's a crazy place," he said. "You just don't know. God forbid something happens. You just don't know where they are."

For him, it is a habit. A check. Eyes dotted, tees crossed. He learned it early in his career and he has not let it go. When Rich pointed out that the player had been sitting in the green room the whole time, plainly visible, Roseman laughed and admitted he was going to take that back to the draft room.

"Why don't we have a list of who's in the green room?" he said. "Let's make sure we do that."

The story carried a small archaeological dig too. Roseman credited Joe Douglas, now back working in the Eagles front office, for the way he runs his own draft conversations. Douglas, he said, used to call him on trades, and Roseman would pick up and ask Douglas what he was about to say no to. That, Roseman said, is the kind of dynamic that keeps the room honest.

The GM also nodded toward Andy Reid, who Roseman said taught him to want to hear the player's voice in the first place. Is the kid alive. Is he healthy. Is everything good.

Rich, doing the math, traced the lineage out loud. Roseman pointed at himself. Where do you think I learned it from. Reid was Roseman's head coach for the first 14 years of his Eagles tenure.

AJ Brown, by the way, is still an Eagle. Roseman wanted that one on the record before the draft questions even started.