Howie Roseman’s Eagles offseason to-do list: Pay Jalen Hurts and work around that new contract

INDIANAPOLIS — Howie Roseman wasn’t willing to reminisce.

Fielding questions Tuesday at the NFL Scouting Combine, the Eagles general manager was asked about the advantages of building a team around a quarterback on a low-cost rookie contract. As Roseman pointed out, the team’s days of enjoying an underpaid, overachieving quarterback are likely numbered with Jalen Hurts now eligible for a lucrative deal.

“You want me to get sentimental about how it was before we pay our quarterback?” Roseman said. “It’s the nature of the business. I think the better thing is when you have a quarterback that’s good enough that you want to pay him.”

Just two weeks removed from the Eagles’ Super Bowl LVII loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, Roseman now faces an offseason that will usher in a new phase of team building. The Eagles will likely need to prepare for Hurts’ cap hits ballooning in 2024, potentially in the neighborhood of $50 million a year, while also accounting for the inevitability of key contributors from last season’s team leaving in free agency.

The Eagles have more than a dozen impact players, mostly on defense, set to test the market. Seven of their defensive starters, including coveted players such as defensive tackle Javon Hargrave, safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson, and cornerback James Bradberry, will be able to field offers starting March 13. According to overthecap.com, the Eagles can clear almost $30 million in cap space by restructuring cornerback Darius Slay and right tackle Lane Johnson’s contracts, but that won’t be nearly enough to retain the majority of their free agents.

“Are we going to get all the free agents back? We’re not,” Roseman said. “We’re just not. We’re not capable of getting all those guys back, but we also understand we’re in a good situation in terms of picks that we have going forward. We have a lot of guys under contract not only for this year but going forward. We’re not going to make excuses for the position that we’re in.”

» READ MORE: The Eagles have a ton of free agents on hold until Jalen Hurts’ contract extension gets done

With free agency still a few weeks away, the first domino could be Hurts’ deal. The team is motivated to sign him to an extension, although Roseman didn’t divulge much on where things stand two weeks into the offseason. Aside from setting the table for the rest of free agency, the Eagles have reason to act quickly to extend Hurts before the price goes up even more.

Other star signal callers like Joe Burrow, Lamar Jackson, and Justin Herbert are each eligible for extensions as well and could reset the market, which is currently hovering around the $50 million yearly mark set by Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson, and Kyler Murray.

Roseman said the team wants to find a number both sides are comfortable with, while conceding it will be a boon for Hurts, who counted for $1.6 million against the cap last season.

“You go through it in a way that you want to find a win-win solution,” Roseman said. “You want to find something that he feels really good about and at the same time we feel really good about, and surround him with good players. He knows that. He’s a smart guy. He understands that, and that doesn’t mean that it’s not going to be a tremendous contract for him, because he deserves that, too.”

April’s draft, along with the next few ones, will be the biggest factor in how Roseman navigates the new landscape he hopes to face. The Eagles have stockpiled picks over the next few offseasons, which will help them in their new reality, and they also stand to gain up to four compensatory picks for their free agents who sign elsewhere.

The Eagles notably didn’t sign anyone to midseason extensions last year, something they typically do. Roseman said Tuesday the rationale for waiting until the offseason was to avoid any internal strife because of the team’s volume of free agents.

“We thought it would create a different dynamic if we started to pick one guy and not another guy,” Roseman said. “So we understood that could cost us in the end, but we felt like it was worthwhile because of the opportunity to potentially win a championship.”

» READ MORE: Jalen Hurts’ extension is a priority, and Eagles GM Howie Roseman isn’t influenced by Carson Wentz’s contract

With nearly 20 players now on expiring deals, Roseman said there will be Eagles who don’t even receive an offer from the team as they sort through everything in an effort not to low-ball anyone.

“I think it’s hard to make offers that aren’t really in the range of what a player is going to get,” Roseman said. “Our players, what they have done for us and how they have worked and the character that they have shown and the success they have had ... we’re just going to be honest with them and basically tell them, if it’s a guy that we’re interested in, we’ll tell him the range.”

The team has the 10th and 30th picks in this year’s draft, netting the former by trading a first-rounder to the New Orleans Saints last year in exchange for a stash of future assets. There’s expected to be a run of quarterbacks early, which would benefit the Eagles’ pursuit of one of the most talented non-quarterbacks in the draft.

Quarterbacks Bryce Young (Alabama), C.J. Stroud (Ohio State), Anthony Richardson (Florida), and Will Levis (Kentucky) all have a chance to go before the Eagles pick, something Roseman is pulling for.

“We’re not in that market, so hopefully they all go,” Roseman said. “But they’re talented enough to go. So we do our work on them, just like we do our work on every player in the draft. These are talented guys at the top of the draft and I think there’s going to be a lot of competition for them.”

The Eagles’ most obvious needs going into this week of prospect evaluation are fluid because of the number of free agents, but cornerback, defensive tackle, and running back are easy to project. This year’s group of first-round prospects is generally considered a bit thinner than in years past, but there’s a strong group of corners and running backs to choose from.

» READ MORE: Eagles draft: 3 position groups that should interest the Birds during the NFL scouting combine

Still, Roseman hinted his well-established tendency to value trench players over skill positions will once again be apparent this offseason.

“We’re going to prioritize the things that are important to us,” Roseman said. “Things that we build our team on, we’re going to make sure those areas are strong.”