There happens to be a team from New York that had as bad a Sunday night as the Kansas City Chiefs. That team is the Giants, who are in the same division as the Eagles, just not in the same league.
Giants fans are allowed to forget for the moment that their team is also in the same division as the Commanders and Jayden Daniels, a gifted rookie quarterback who is going to be a star for the next decade and, if blessed with good health, for much longer than that.
Giants fans just need to focus on the Eagles and the way they are run, the way they have turned things over since the first Super Bowl they won – against Tom Brady and the Patriots – just seven years ago. They need to look at the way the Eagles’ brilliant general manager, Howie Roseman, has rebuilt his roster since then, then take a much closer look at the players he has brought in, so many of them through the draft, since Joe Schoen has been his counterpart at MetLife Stadium.
Even the Jets can take a look down the Jersey Turnpike at the Eagles, and realize that taking the wrong quarterback with the No. 2 overall pick – as the Roseman and the Eagles did with Carson Wentz — doesn’t permanently relegate you in the NFL.
It isn’t merely that the Giants did everything except drive Saquon Barkley down to Philly for one of the surpassing seasons a running back has had in NFL history. It’s even more than that. It’s more than that because Barkley just turned 28 on Sunday. Jalen Hurts is 26. Jalen Carter, who might be the best player the Eagles have on either side of the ball, is 23. DeVonta Smith, who along with Hurts lit up the Chiefs’ pass defense in New Orleans on Sunday night, is 26. Noted bookworm A.J. Brown is 27.
Cooper DeJean, another birthday boy on Super Sunday and the one who pick-sixed Patrick Mahomes, is just 22. The Eagles have not just gotten better since Nick Foles, as if hit by lightning, beat Brady and Bill Belichick and the Patriots in Feb. of 2018. They keep getting younger. Their coach Nick Sirianni – is he off the hot seat now? – just did the job of his life from the time his team was 2-2. Their veteran defensive coordinator, Vic Fangio, just out-Spagsed Steve Spagnuolo, one of the great coordinators in pro football history, in the big game. And the new offensive coordinator Roseman brought in this season – Kellen Moore – is expected to be the next coach of the Saints.
But more dangerous to the Giants than the Eagles’ youth and talent, both on the field and on the sideline, as the Giants try to claw their way back to relevance, and respectability, is the presence of Roseman in Philly.
You know how many guys on his team are still around since the ’17 Eagles went all the way? Four. You know how many are still around from the team that lost 38-35 to the Chiefs in Super Bowl 57? Nineteen. Roseman isn’t just a great football man, one of the best of his time and without question the best of all time in Philadelphia. He is also a visionary and a realist at the same time. And he isn’t afraid.
In the time that Schoen has been running the Giants’ front office, a time in which he extended Daniel Jones and made the “Hard Knocks” determination to let Saquon walk out the door and then run his way into the record books, here are some of Rosenman’s notable draft hits:
Carter.
DeJean.
Cam Jergens (he replaced Jason Kelce).
Quinyon Mitchell.
Roseman also picked up the undrafted Reed Blankenship, and added former Jets bust, Mekhi Becton, converted him to guard, and ask Saquon how he thinks that all worked out. Roseman also traded for Zack Baun and Jahan Dotson, a wide receiver who came within a yard of being the third Eagles receiver in Super Bowl 59 to score a touchdown, along with Smith and Brown.
The Eagles’ Brandon Graham, who may be retiring, clearly is thinking about a future career in the front office whenever his playing career ends. Here is something Graham said after the Eagles rolled the Chiefs:
“Let me tell you: I wanna learn as much as I can. If you want an intern coming in, I wanna learn under Howie. We got something special going on. We got the secret sauce.”
Secret sauce? You bet. All that turnover since the Minneapolis Super Bowl seven years ago. All the turnover in just two years since the Eagles made it back to the big game. Now the Eagles effectively end their season with a Super Bowl game that was over at halftime, all of this set in motion by their general manager, who had one of the best off-seasons someone in his job could ever possibly have.
The crowning moment of the off-season, of course, was signing Barkley, one of the best free-agent acquisitions by a championship team in NFL history. When they were beating the Rams in their first playoff game, Barkley had one of the best snow days in history. The Eagles then rang up Daniels and the Commanders for 55 points in the NFC Championship game. So, a team that we were told could only run the ball with Barkley nearly scored 100 combined points in the final two games of their season.
So, that is where the bar is set for the Giants in the NFC East. The Eagles have Roseman. They have Sirianni, who made all the adjustments he needed to make this season, including some about himself. They have a star quarterback in Hurts, and Saquon, and Brown and Smith under the age of 30 on offense; have Carter at 24 anchoring their defense. It wasn’t just the Chiefs who saw all that on Sunday night. So did the Giants.