Eagles NFL draft: Birds trade up to take Alabama LB Jihaad Campbell; big deal shakes up top of the draft

After trading up one pick to draft Alabama linebacker and South Jersey native Jihaad Campbell, Eagles fans might be curious why the Birds decided to swap with the Kansas City Chiefs if they didn't plan to take him.

ESPN NFL insider Adam Schefter had an explanation.

“I think it’s to block another team from potentially coming up, especially when it only cost you a fifth round draft pick,” Schefter said during ESPN’s broadcast of the draft Thursday night.

The Eagles are a few picks away from being on the clock. Who's on the board that makes the most sense?

Boston College edge rusher Donovan Ezeiruaku might be at the top of that list. The Eagles have a consistent track record of taking players that they brought in for a visit, and Ezeiruaku fits that bill.

Ezeiruaku, a Philadelphia native who grew up in nearby Williamstown in South Jersey, was a consensus All-American after tallying 16.5 sacks this past season.

The New York Giants aren't done on night one of the 2025 NFL draft. After taking Abdul Carter No. 3 overall, they traded up from No. 34 overall with the Houston Texans, who were set to pick 25th in the first round.

After passing on quarterback the first time around, the Giants decided to draft Jaxson Dart, the quarterback from Ole Miss, over Colorado star Shedeur Sanders in one of the night's shocking moves.

Up until this point, Cam Ward was the only quarterback drafted so far. Dart, a three-year starter in Lane Kiffin's offense, completed 69.3% of his passes, with 4,279 yards and 29 touchdowns in 2024, adding a dual-threat element to the Rebels offense and making some impressive throws under pressure.

The Eagles have drafted a ton of Georgia Bulldogs in the first round over the last few years. Since 2020, the Eagles have selected three Georgia defenders in the first round – Nolan Smith and Jalen Carter in 2023 and Jordan Davis in 2022 – not to mention the Bulldogs they’ve found elsewhere in the draft, like Nakobe Dean.

But one team that hasn’t picked a Bulldog? The Atlanta Falcons – until they grabbed Jalon Walker at No. 15 in the first round Thursday.

The College GameDay crew had a bit of fun with that statistic.

One of the most commonly mocked players to the Eagles in the leadup to the 2025 NFL draft will not be coming to Philly after all.

Ole Miss defensive tackle Walter Nolen was drafted No. 16 overall by the Arizona Cardinals. Last season was a breakout for Nolen, the former five-star recruit who started his career at Texas A&M. He finished with 48 tackles (14 for loss), 6.5 sacks, and two fumble recoveries.

Nolen will join Jonathan Gannon's led Cardinals, the former Eagles defensive coordinator, and can learn from veterans Calais Campbell and former Eagles edge rusher Josh Sweat.

With the No. 12-overall pick in the draft, the Dallas Cowboys are shoring up their protection for Dak Prescott, selecting Alabama guard Tyler Booker.

The 6-foot-4, 321-pound Booker figures to serve as the replacement for Zack Martin, the Cowboys’ nine-time Pro Bowl, seven-time All-Pro right guard who retired this offseason after 11 seasons in Dallas. Booker brought a physically-imposing presence to Alabama as a two-year starter, opening up lanes in the running game and keeping quarterback Jalen Milroe clean in the pocket.

Booker is the third offensive lineman that the Cowboys have taken in the first round in the last four drafts. Last year, the Cowboys took Tyler Guyton with the No. 29-overall selection. In 2022, they selected Tyler Smith at No. 24.

After the Giants took fellow Penn Stater Abdul Carter, Micah Parsons had some bold claims about New York’s defensive line being the best in the NFC East, even better than the Eagles.

“It’s pretty nice,” Parsons said on the Bleacher Report live stream. “Brandon Graham retired, Josh Sweat gone, but Dexter Lawrence, to me, is the best defensive tackle in the game of football. He had nine sacks in the first nine weeks of football. We’ve got to be a little bit real around here.”

That said, Parsons backtracked a bit, giving credit to his own defensive line down in Dallas. But when pressed if Lawrence was better than Eagles defensive tackle Jalen Carter, Parsons said “100%.” Former Eagles defensive back Darius Slay had to push back.

Philadelphia Eagles fan and former La Salle College High School star Abdul Carter will get to face his childhood team at least twice per season for the immediate future.

Carter, a unanimous All-American edge rusher, was selected third overall Thursday night by the New York Giants. He is the highest-drafted Penn State player since Saquon Barkley was picked second by the Giants in 2018. 

The Giants have been a dumpster fire of late, including last season's 3-14 campaign, but Carter gives the Giants another strong pass rusher to join Kayvon Thibodeaux and Brian Burns on the edge and Dexter Lawrence on the inside.

The Inquirer’s Eagles beat writers rate 16 prospects based upon the Draft Meter scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being most likely that the Eagles will pick that player, and 1 being least likely.

The method has successfully predicted whom the Eagles have taken each of the past four seasons, so who do our writers think the Birds will land tonight?

Walter Nolen, DT, Ole Miss

North Philly native Abdul Carter hit the red carpet in Green Bay ahead of the 2025 NFL draft alongside his parents, father Chris, and mother Tina. The former Penn State star is expected to be drafted early, within the first four picks of the draft.

His father, Chris, called Thursday the "best days of our lives until [Abdul] helps a team win a championship Super Bowl."

"The hard work wasn't for nothing, and even if we only inspire one other person to do it, just like, like the can, it could be done," Chris Carter said.

The Tennessee Titans have yet to go on the clock, but the chaos has reportedly already begun.

According to multiple reports, multiple teams have fielded calls to trade out of their respective spots in the 2025 NFL draft.

According to ESPN's Adam Schefter, the Broncos are listening to calls about the 20th overall pick.

During a sweltering hot July day in Hunting Park last summer, Chris Carter watched from the sideline, seated under a tent to catch some temporary shade while his son’s first football camp unfolded. Abdul Carter grew up at 11th and Ontario Streets, approximately four minutes away from Aztec Football Field, home to a Pop Warner youth team, the North Philly Aztecs. It was at this field that Chris knew his son would play professional football as Abdul flew around making plays wearing No. 22 as an 8-year-old.

The camp was 10 years in the making. Chris Carter watched Abdul and his teammates make it to the 2011 Pop Warner Super Bowl. He bestowed the nickname “Incredible” on his son. It’s a word that shows up in both of their X profiles and is the basis of Abdul’s INCRDBL foundation.

“The young man did everything I asked him to do at a high level, that’s how he got the nickname Incredible,” Chris said. “That’s where Incredible derives from. … To see it materialize, it’s amazing.”

Picking last in the first round of the NFL draft often is a crapshoot, and the Eagles are tasked with closing this draft’s initial round after winning Super Bowl LIX. But how often has the reigning Super Bowl champion or the team picking last in the first round actually stayed put?

The last time the Eagles hoisted the Lombardi Trophy after the 2017 season, they traded out of the first round altogether. The Baltimore Ravens traded up from the second round with the Eagles to take Lamar Jackson 32nd overall in the 2018 draft. The Ravens sent their second- and fourth-round picks, along with a 2019 second-rounder, to the Eagles in exchange for Pick 32 and their fourth-round selection.

The Eagles ended up making an additional trade up to take Dallas Goedert 49th overall in that draft, but there is a precedent for teams at the end of the first round trading up or back.

With the 22nd pick in the 2024 NFL draft, The Philadelphia Eagles select Quinyon Mitchell. Defensive back, Toledo.

Surrounded by his family on one of the most important nights of his life, the young cornerback couldn’t wait to hear those words announced from his future teammate Jordan Mailata — but more importantly he couldn’t wait to get out of his suit.

“It was crazy man,” said Mitchell on the Big Play Slay podcast. “When you watch the draft, I got drafted and I was really like mad. I was sitting there all day in a suit. You see me getting drafted, I didn’t have a smile on my face. I was really just ready to work. But man, I was tired of sitting in that suit for the whole — til like 5 o’clock that evening, man.”

If you watched college football last season, you probably heard Ashton Jeanty's name before. The Boise State star had a near record breaking season, helping led the Broncos to their first College Football Playoff appearance from the Mountain West. Jeanty finished with 2,601 yards, 28 yards short of Barry Sanders' single season record, and 29 touchdowns, often breaking several tackles on the way to long touchdown runs.

Last week, Jeanty penned a letter to NFL general managers in a Players Tribune piece, and he started with a shoutout to Eagles running back Saquon Barkley, a big catalyst on their way to a Super Bowl LIX victory.

"Most people, they watched the Eagles win the Super Bowl a couple of months ago, they watched Saquon run through everyone in the playoffs, and they thought to themselves, This is amazing," Jeanty wrote. "I watched it and I thought something different. I thought, That can be me."

It is unlikely that the Eagles go back to the well and draft another defensive back early in the draft, but that didn't stop them from bringing in cornerbacks expected to go early in the draft for predraft visits.

Among them was Kentucky cornerback Maxwell Hairston, who held this year's fastest 40-yard dash time at the NFL scouting combine, clocking in at 4.28 seconds. The instinctual corner had six interceptions over the last two years, with three of them returned for touchdowns. He was limited to just seven games this season because of injury, but has excellent zone coverage instincts and transitions smoothly out of his backpedal to attack the football in off-man coverage situations.

Hairston, who said at the NFL Play 60 event on Wednesday he has enjoyed the draft process and garnered a lot of interest across the league, took a predraft visit to Philly and gave the organization plenty of praise.

During his tenure as the Eagles' general manager, Howie Roseman has never used a top 50 pick on a safety. But that could change Thursday night, as projected first-round safety Malaki Starks is among the prospects the Eagles could consider taking at No. 32 overall in the 2025 NFL draft.

A three-year starter for Georgia, Starks has played both nickel and safety in his career, has ball production (six career interceptions), while providing run support and playing as a single-high safety in the Bulldog's secondary. In addition, Starks came in for a Top 30 visit to Philly, a sign that the Eagles are seriously considering drafting him. The last four Eagles first-round picks all took predraft visits to the NovaCare Complex.

During an NFL Play 60 event in Green Bay, Wis. on Wednesday, where the 15 draft attendees assisted youngsters from the Special Olympics with football drills, Starks talked about his predraft visit with the Eagles and potentially teaming up with former Bulldogs – both former teammates and those who came before him.

There’s a real possibility the Eagles will go on the clock at the end of the first round without any first round-graded players left on their board.

If that’s the case, trading down makes sense, as there should be teams interested in moving back up into the first round to draft a prospect with a fifth-year option on their rookie contract. In this scenario, the Eagles make a deal with the Saints, an organization with which they’ve brokered plenty of trades, and add an extra Day 2 pick.

More important, they add Ohio State offensive lineman Donovan Jackson, a prospect with the pedigree, versatility, and high-level physical traits the Eagles often covet when targeting trench players.

The Eagles have eight picks entering the draft, though that’s likely to change with Roseman at the helm.

Since 2010, Roseman has averaged more than three trades per draft, according to NFL data. He’s traded up 19 times during his tenure as general manager (excluding 2015, when ex-coach Chip Kelly was in charge), and traded down 27 times during that span.

Last year, the Eagles made a record-tying eight trades during the draft.