Eagles GM Howie Roseman Talks NFL Draft, Greenard Trade & More with Rich

Howie Roseman returned to The Rich Eisen Show for his post-draft tradition, and Rich opened by setting the ground rules. AJ Brown is still an Eagle. Jalen Hurts is off the table for unfair questions. Let's talk about the draft.

The story Rich wanted first was the moment that broke containment online. Philadelphia drafted Makai Lemon, but the broadcast caught the Eagles unable to reach the player on the phone. Lemon was on the line with another team. Rich pressed Howie on what really happened.

Howie laid out the sequence. The trade with the Cowboys closed quickly on the clock. Some groundwork had been done in advance, so Philadelphia just had to lock the terms. Once on the clock, Howie waited a minute to brief his staff. They started calling at six minutes left. Voicemail. Calls back. Reach the agent, then keep dialing the player.

With about three minutes left, they got Lemon. Howie admitted he doesn't track the league's list of who's actually attending the draft in person, so he didn't know Lemon was right there in the green room. He wasn't pretending it wasn't a tense few minutes. "I went to a dark place," Howie told Rich.

Rich asked why. Why does a GM need to hear the player's voice at all? Howie's answer was direct. The world is a crazy place. You want to dot the i's and cross the t's. He shared a story from his time as personnel director, when a player went unreachable on draft day. His parents picked up. The player was so frustrated about not being drafted yet that he had gone for a walk. "You got to go find him and get him," Howie remembered telling them.

Rich pressed on whether the eight-minute round was a factor. Howie said no, that this all wrapped with a couple of minutes left. He admitted he did briefly consider what it would have looked like to draft Lemon without the call. He used the moment to tease his own war room about not having a list of green-room attendees.

Rich asked who taught Howie the standard. Howie pointed to Andy Reid, his boss for 14 years. Reid's rule, in Howie's telling, is simple. Confirm the kid is alive, healthy, good. That's the bar.

From there, Howie ran through Lemon. A natural separator at the top of routes, from the slot or outside. Strong hands. Real play speed. Run after the catch. The thread that kept coming up was instincts. Howie talked about Lemon's instincts the way he talks about character.

Rich pivoted to the Jonathan Greenard trade with Minnesota. Greenard arrived and got a contract in the same beat. Howie explained the timing. Philadelphia had lost a free agent during the negotiation window. They added Reek to handle the other corner spot but felt a void on the defensive line. Greenard, a captain at the Vikings and a Florida product, fit. Howie called him a turbo button on top of an already strong defensive line.

The close was the seventh-round flier. The Eagles took a player named Bernard from the International Pathway Program, out of Nigeria, with the 251st pick. Howie confirmed Bernard has never played a snap of organized football. Position coach Clint Hurtt traveled to evaluate him in person and reported back with conviction on the power, athleticism, and willingness to learn. Howie said the same thing about this pick that he said about Jordan Mailata, the offensive tackle the Eagles took years earlier from the same program. He wanted the result, whatever it turned out to be, to happen with the Eagles.