The Eagles have played in the Super Bowl three times in the last eight seasons, and each time they’ve been built differently by general manager Howie Roseman. The Chiefs learned the hard way in Super Bowl 59 because they would have needed an all-time comeback.
The secret of the Philadelphia Eagles’ Super Bowl plan is there is no plan.
Well, not exactly.
The Eagles have a meticulous designer in general manager Howie Roseman, who took his post in 2010. His genius comes in how he has shapeshifted to build different varieties of elite teams between his franchise’s first title in the 2017 season and its second one in Super Bowl 59 Sunday night.
The team that turned Patrick Mahomes into dust – the Eagles led 34-0 inside the final minute of the third quarter before easing up in their 40-22 victory – had only a passing resemblance to the one that beat Tom Brady in the “Philly Special” game seven seasons ago.
It only bore slight similarities with the team that lost to the same Kansas City Chiefs two years ago, even though most of these Eagles’ stars were also in place at that time.
This way of doing things isn’t standard for great general managers in the modern NFL. Roseman is unusual because he’s now won two championships with two different head coaches and two quarterbacks – really three quarterbacks, given the Carson Wentz and Nick Foles hybrid that got the job done in 2017.
But the Eagles’ chameleonic tendencies go much deeper than that, and now that they’ve led to a second title, Roseman has established a rock-solid Pro Football Hall of Fame case.
He’s also taught a lesson: There’s more than one way to bake the championship cake, even within one front office.
Each of the three Eagles’ Super Bowl teams since 2017 has an identity distinct from the other two, as our data can help us see clearly.
2024’s Bullyball Master Class
“Physically dominate the opponent” is every football coach’s goal. Perhaps there’s never been a team that’s carried the principle in as committed a fashion as the 2024 Eagles.
On offense, the Eagles’ objective was to run the opposition over. It wasn’t just on the Tush Push, the short-yardage play that has become synonymous with Super Bowl MVP-winning quarterback Jalen Hurts and his bruising offensive lines of the past several seasons.
Their 50.6% designed run frequency across the regular season and playoffs was more than two percentage points higher than the next run-heaviest team – the Baltimore Ravens. Their 4.9 yards per designed run ranked fourth. Their 58.7% run disruption rate led the league, a testament to how expertly the Eagles’ offensive line prevented defenders from blowing up gaps.
It’s fun when a plan comes together. The Eagles have been extraordinary in identifying and developing talent, hitting big on second-round picks like center Cam Jurgens and guard Landon Dickerson as well as Hurts himself.
But they’ve also invested heavily in building overwhelming force. Saquon Barkley, who had the third-highest running back salary in the NFL, will go down as perhaps the best non-quarterback free agent signing of the 21st century. The NFC franchise is eighth in o-line spending and has a quarterback whose best skill is acting as a human battering ram on designed carries.
The defense channeled the offense. The most important addition the Eagles made between 2022 and 2024 was arguably not Barkley, but defensive tackle Jalen Carter, who was excellent as a 2023 rookie and became a full-on world-beater this season.
The ’24 Eagles didn’t have the same incredible ability to generate sacks that the 2022 team did – more on them shortly – but they had an interior pressure-generator unlike any other in Carter. The ‘22 Birds were dead last in the NFL in run disruption percentage (57.3%) and had a mediocre rush defense overall.
With Carter and his team-leading 25 run stuffs helping out this season, the Eagles were well above average by both rush success rate allowed (33.9%) and yards allowed per designed run (4.0). Inside linebacker Zack Baun, another new addition from the last Super Bowl team, led the linebackers with 32 run disruptions.
The Eagles also had freakishly good cornerbacks who put receivers in straitjackets all season. The Eagles’ 47.1% burn-allowed rate was the fifth best in the NFL. Rookie cornerbacks Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean combined for 25 passes defensed and allowed burn rates under 19% each. (That’s how infrequently a receiver separated from them to make a clean catch.)
2022’s Pass-Rushing Exhibition
The 2022 team was Super Bowl-worthy and wound up losing to Mahomes by a field goal. Though those Eagles fell short of immortality, they’re instructive as to how Roseman has built his teams over the years.
That Eagles squad had Hurts at quarterback and a solid offensive line, with eventual Hall of Fame center Jason Kelce as its anchor. But they didn’t have a running back like Barkley – no disrespect to Miles Sanders, his fellow Penn State product, who had a solid season – and struggled to maintain gap integrity. Hence that league’s worst run disruption rate allowed and an overall run game that was just OK.
The offense had its benefits, though. The Eagles had gotten the Tennessee Titans to trade them A.J. Brown, a masterstroke by Roseman when the AFC squad’s relationship with the star wideout fell through. They spent a first-round pick on Heisman Trophy-winning receiver DeVonta Smith, and those receivers helped Hurts level up into one of the league’s better quarterbacks. The Eagles averaged 7.0 yards per designed pass play to rank fifth in the league and got a 59.8% burn rate from their receiving targets (eighth in the league).
Most importantly, the Eagles had a dominant pass–blocking line. Teams blitzed the Eagles 38.8% of the time – the fourth-highest average – while seeking to heat up Hurts. Yet, the Eagles allowed just a 6.6% pressure rate, almost exactly league average, giving Hurts time to throw to Brown and Smith against limited defensive backfields. Right tackle Lane Johnson, who is ticketed for Canton himself and now has two Super Bowls, allowed exactly two adjusted sacks on more than 1,000 snaps that season.
None of that was even the hallmark of the 2022 Eagles, though. It was the defense that notched 70 sacks, two short of the NFL single-season record, and had four different players reach double figures. The Eagles blitzed a below-average 30% of the time but led the league easily with a 10.3% sack rate.
Two of the key edge rushers from that team (Haason Redick with 16.0 sacks and Javon Hargrave with 11.0) left the franchise after that. Another, Brandon Graham with 11.0, has had just 6.5 sacks the past two seasons amid injury and aging.
The 2024 Eagles still had Sweat at the height of his powers, but they blitzed just 18.6% of the time under new defensive coordinator Vic Fangio, and their sack rate fell to a just-above-average 7.0%. The six sacks of Mahomes in the Super Bowl win felt like a throwback to a time when that was the defense’s M.O.
2017’s Duct Tape and Chicken Wire Routine
The 2017 Eagles’ Super Bowl champions defy easy explanation. More than Roseman’s other elite teams, this one was just magic.
Wentz cosplayed as one of the best players in the NFL for most of the regular season before he suffered an ACL tear and gave way to Foles for the playoffs. Doug Pederson, a head coach who’s since been fired not just by Roseman but also by the miserable Jacksonville Jaguars, made the most memorable play call in Super Bowl history, the “Philly Special” pass to Foles on 4th-and-goal.
The roster from 2017 had almost fully flipped by the time the Eagles lifted the Lombardi Trophy again Sunday night. Only Johnson, Graham, kicker Jake Elliott and long snapper Rick Lovato remained from it. That degree of turnover is natural in the modern NFL, but it was Roseman’s willingness to change not long after this first title that signified the Eagles would have many good days ahead.
Roseman was not precious about:
- Foles, the playoff hero, had one year left on his contract in Philadelphia. Roseman let him exit to Jacksonville in free agency on a big deal that worked out fine for everyone but the Jaguars.
- Wentz, the franchise quarterback, had a megadeal and would have won NFL MVP in 2017 if not for his late-season injury. By 2021, the Eagles had released him.
- Pederson had delivered the franchise’s first title. The Eagles fired him after three more seasons, only one of which – a four-win pandemic season in 2020 – saw them miss the playoffs.
Roseman made Pederson the third-fastest coach to get fired following a Super Bowl win, the kind of move that can wreck a general manager’s reputation if it doesn’t work.
The line in public perception between tinkering for tinkering’s sake and moving decisively to fix what’s broken, even when it’s worked in the past, is thin. The inability to navigate it dooms coaches and general managers all the time.
It made Howie Roseman stronger, however. Now he has two teams with very little in common, other than the biggest thing of all.
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