At Combine Eagles Are Building For Long-Term

Chip Kelly and Howie Roseman are in a much different situation at this year's scouting combine from where the organization was a year ago. 

To say Chip Kelly, Howie Roseman and the Philadelphia Eagles are better prepared to tackle the scouting combine, which is taking place this week, free agency and ultimately the draft than they were one year ago would be an understatement. 

At this time last year the Eagles didn't know for certain what scheme they were running defensively.

Kelly was attending his first combine in Indianapolis and the coaching staff at large had been together for less than two months.

Yes, this truly is a different, more streamlined approach taking place to the offseason, circa 2014.

"One of the good things about last year was it was the unknown how some of our players who had never been in a 3-4 would fit," Roseman told reporters Thursday. "We didn't have the answer to all those questions last year at this time. We had guesses, but we didn't know for sure. And so now you have a year's worth of film to watch and grade the players and see how they handled it, which gives us a much better handle on our own roster than maybe we had last year at this time. Then when you look at the evolution, I think that when we look at our front, for example, the young players on our front – we are really excited about that group of young players and how they took to the change in scheme. We understand that it was still their first year in the scheme, they have room to grow and continue to get better."

Even after winning the NFC East division in 2013, Roseman and his staff are not resting on their laurels and are hoping to build on that success not only in 2014, but well beyond. 

The combine though is just one step of the process in preparing for the NFL draft taking place this May, the other facet of course is free agency. 

Even before the market opens on March 11th, the Eagles must decide where Jeremy Maclin and Riley Cooper fit in their future plans, as well as whether or not to move on from the likes of DeMeco Ryans, Brent Celek, Todd Herremans and Jason Avant.

For Roseman's part, he does not sound like a general manager looking to shoe-horn players into a system or short-term goals. 

"We have a bunch of young players on our team that we want to keep around, and we don't want to be in a position where a year from now we went out and signed a bunch of guys and we're not able to re-sign the guys that we want to be our core players going forward," Roseman said.

Clearly this is an organization still feeling the aftershocks for the disastrous spending spree in the summer of 2011 when Roseman landed free agents such as Nnamdi Asomugha, Jason Babin, Ronnie Brown, Vince Young and others, which resulted in a dreadful 12-20 stretch over two forgetful seasons. 

The clear takeaway from Roseman's comments Thursday is that this is a team that will be built around it's young foundation with veteran leaders brought in to supplement those players, not one constructed by free agents who could wind up being hit or miss.