Eagles general manager Howie Roseman and his staff have already begun to build Chip Kelly's draft board as the entire coaching staff and scouting department takes in Senior Bowl practices this week.
Howie Roseman and the Eagles front office have been hard at work laying the foundation of what will eventually become Chip Kelly's second NFL draft board.
Last season at this time the Eagles entered the draft with the fourth overall pick at their disposal, which ultimately turned into right tackle Lane Johnson. Johnson skyrocketed up big boards across the league thanks in large part to his performance during Senior Bowl week in Mobile, Alabama.
This year, the Eagles are in a much different position in more ways than one.
After winning the NFC East division championship in Kelly's first season, the Eagles will choose 22nd overall this May and unlike a year ago, the complete coaching staff is in place and together on this annual scouting trip.
While Kelly and the coaching staff have been focused on the pressure cooker that is the NFL season up until a week ago when everyone had the week off, Roseman and his staff were hard at work putting together a list of 600 possible targets from the draft eligible college prospects.
The organization takes this week so seriously that even owner Jeffrey Lurie is taking in the proceedings this week, for the first time.
Roseman and the scouting staff has narrowed the list down to 200 players that Kelly and company should narrow in on this week and it's inevitable that list will be trimmed once again by the time the scouting combine rolls around February 19th.
"[Kelly's] always going to be a part of the process and that's the partnership that you have with your head coach," Roseman said earlier this week. "You want to make sure that you're putting in front of him players that fit what he's looking for and that he can evaluate them as well. Our first job as a personnel department is to try and narrow it down. We spend a lot of time on 600 guys, making it down to 400, making it down to 200, making it down to a manageable number for our coaches. We do that, and there's a lot of trust on their part of us doing that, making sure that when they come out here and go: ‘Hey why isn't this guy on my list?' We can explain it pretty quickly to them why we got rid of that guy and why we've narrowed it down."
While Kelly's philosophy of 'big players beat little players' is well documented, especially this time around there will be much more taken into account.
Yes, the coaching and scouting departments will watch plenty of practice reps this week and sit in on weight room sessions, the evaluation goes deeper than that because of the culture that Kelly established in year-one at the NFL level.
As recently as the 2012 season the Eagles locker room was a wasteland of hyperinflated egos and underperformers. That simply wasn't the case in 2013.
That balance of talent and chemistry is top of the Eagles mind heading into this offseason.
"You want to know that you're bringing in guys who will fit into your culture," Roseman explained. "Right now we have a good culture and that's the fun part of it. You want to make sure you continue that and you don't want to bring in anybody who's going to rock the boat. It's such a team sport. You're talking about 53 guys coming together and you think about where all these guys come from. It's different backgrounds, different cities, you have to fit them all in."
Roseman, Kelly and the Eagles may not have a high draft pick at their disposal this year, but the process of finding who will be the newest class to wear the midnight green certainly hasn't changed.
Matt Lombardo is the Editor-In-Chief of Eagledelphia and also an on-air personality on 97.5 FM The Fanatic in Philadelphia. Join the conversation and follow Matt on Twitter.
