Peter King on the Eagles draft:
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I didn't want to let the draft go away completely without telling you what I feel is the most underrated and unknown story of draft weekend. I didn't notice it until I started piecing together all the trades from Day 2 of the draft, starting with the Giants' deal with Philadelphia that allowed New York to pick wide receiver
Ramses Barden with a choice in the middle of the third round. But the upshot of that trade, and four others within five hours, left the Eagles as the power players in the 2010 draft.
What would you think if I told you the
Philadelphia Eagles got third-, fifth-, sixth- and seventh-round draft choices, plus half a starting cornerback for nothing in this year's draft?
That's right. For free. There is no smoke, mirrors or cheating involved. Only thought and effort.
For moving down six spots in the third round -- eventually taking a player they were considering for that 85th pick anyway -- the Eagles got filthy rich. I am shocked more teams don't run their draft the way the Eagles do. It's almost irresponsible that teams don't do it the Philadelphia way.
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</td></tr></tbody></table>"Actually, I'm happy more teams don't,'' said
Tom Heckert, the Eagles general manager. "If more teams did, we wouldn't be able to do what we do.''
This may come out the wrong way, so bear with me. But if I were a football fan looking for a team to root for, I'd pick the Eagles, and what they did on draft weekend is a big reason. The Eagles think. They don't do things the way they've always been done because that's the way they've always been done. For all the frustrations they've given their fans because they haven't won a championship in the 10-year
Andy Reid Era, they've done what, as a fan, I'd like my team to do: They give their fans a chance every July at camp time to think they're going to make the playoffs and have a chance to contend for the Super Bowl. Isn't that what you want, as a fan? A chance, every year? What team every year in this decade has given you that chance? Philadelphia. New England. Indianapolis. Pittsburgh. The Giants, maybe.
But what the Eagles did on the second day of the draft -- still unnoticed eight days later; no one's said a word about it -- is one of the greatest feats of trading down and getting value for the future that I've ever seen. And I mean ever. They took the 85th pick and eventually turned it into four draft choices between the third and seventh rounds, plus half of the compensation paid to New England to acquire
Ellis Hobbs, a Super Bowl XLII starting corner.
What Heckert and Reid did, in brief:
? Traded the 85th overall pick (third round) to the Giants for the 91st (third-round) and the 164th (fifth-round) picks.
? Traded the 91st pick to Seattle for the 137th (fifth-round), 213th (seventh-round) and the Seahawks' third-round pick in 2010.
? Traded the fifth-round pick acquired from Seattle plus the 141st pick (fifth-round, acquired from Cleveland) to New England for cornerback Hobbs.
? Traded the fifth-round pick acquired from the Giants to New Orleans for the 222nd pick (seventh-round), plus the Saints' fifth-round pick in 2010.
? Traded the seventh-round pick acquired from New Orleans to Indianapolis for the Colts' sixth-round pick in 2010.
? Used the seventh-round pick acquired from Seattle to pick running back
Javarris Williams.
Let's go back to my original premise in this column: I said the Eagles got all that for free. I meant it. When the time to make the third-round pick (No. 85 overall) was approaching, the Eagles looked up on their draft board. They had about 30 players graded very closely. Heckert told me if they'd been forced to pick the 25th player on the list, they'd have been fine, because these 30 players all had second- or third-round grades, so by the Eagles' system, even the 25th player on the list would be a solid third-rounder and worthy of a pick around then.
One of the players on the list of 30-some-odd prospects for the 85th pick when the board was put together was
Cornelius Ingram, a 6-foot-5, 245-pound tight end from Florida who missed his senior year after suffering a knee injury in practice for the Gators last August. Now fully rehabbed, Ingram was "right at the top'' of the list of 30, Heckert told me.
Let me take you from the middle of the third round to the middle of the fifth, pick by Eagle pick, to see how they decided to keep moving down -- and the insurance they had to stop the moving-down madness if too many of their preferred players started going off the board.
At 85, and then again at 91, Philadelphia had so many players it wanted on the board that Heckert quick-dialed "almost every team in the league'' in the 80s, getting the Giants to move up six spots, then finding Seattle desperate for the 91st pick, which the 'Hawks would use on Penn State wide receiver
Deon Butler. Heckert drove a hard bargain for this one, trading down 46 spots but picking up an extra seven this year and a three next year.
"Before the draft,'' he said, "we met as an organization, and we knew the 12 draft picks we had all would not make our team. So we agreed -- [owner]
Jeff Lurie, [president]
Joe Banner, Andy and me -- that we'd try to push for a few picks in next year's draft. First, we called everybody in the round without a pick, then just called everybody period. And finally we got [Seattle GM]
Tim Ruskell to agree to a deal because he wanted Deon Butler.''
At 137, the Eagles still had about 10 of their gaggle of 30 picks left. And a veteran player appealed to them. They saw the Patriots take, and keep, two corners from the 2008 draft, and now, in the second round of this draft, they saw
Bill Belichick take UConn cornerback
Darius Butler. "We knew the Patriots signed
Shawn Springs too, so we said, 'Let's try to get
Ellis Hobbs from them.' We talked, Andy and Bill, and Bill didn't want to do it. But a while later we called again, and maybe they thought there was a chance they were going to lose him anyway. I don't know. But a starting cornerback for two fives -- we just couldn't turn that down.''
But now they really wanted Ingram. And the picks ticked by. The Packers at 145, Ravens at 149 and Texans at 152 were candidates to pick a tight end. Would they steal Ingram -- and would the Eagles have gambled too much and traded down one too many times to keep Ingram in their sights? Green Bay took a fullback. Baltimore picked a tight end,
Davon Drew of East Carolina. Houston picked a tight end,
James Casey of Rice.
The Eagles draft room exhaled. They picked Ingram.
Eleven picks later, without a guy on the board who surely would make their team, Philly flipped the pick to New Orleans for a seven and a 2010 fifth-rounder. And midway through the seventh, they dealt their choice to Indy for a 2010 sixth.
"We talk about it all the time -- if you deal a seventh for next year's sixth, then stay aggressive, eventually that seventh could become a first,'' Heckert said. "Even if it doesn't, and that's obviously a best-case scenario, it opens up so many possibilities to keep moving.''
I can't imagine a team that helped itself more on offense in April than Philadelphia. It got a left tackle of the future,
Jason Peters, for first- and fifth-round picks in this draft, took speedy wideout
Jeremy Maclin and pass-catching back
LeSean McCoy and a good tight end risk in Ingram coming off injury. Next year, who knows what part of the team the churning of draft choices will help?
