Tom Donahoe & draft-room drama obscure the fact that Howie Roseman crushed NFL draft for Eagles | Marcus Hayes

When Tom Donahoe dissed Howie Roseman on live television Friday night, it electrified social media and further diminished an already weakened executive:

Donahoe.

For all of his accomplishments, nobody has hired Tom Donahoe to run their draft room in the past 16 years.

Roseman, on the other hand, has been the Eagles’ general manager since 2010, five years after Donahoe held his last position of power. Roseman won Super Bowl LII after the 2017 season. Donahoe has been a front-office advisor for the Eagles since 2012. Roseman is his boss. There’s a reason for both of those things. Roseman occasionally gets it right.

Roseman got it right both Thursday and Friday.

Donahoe, meanwhile, clearly was irritated at Roseman’s third-round shenanigans. His disrespectful reaction, live on ESPN, infuriated the Eagles’ brain trust, according to two league sources.

This could get awkward.

Owner Jeffrey Lurie stood 10 feet away as Donahoe chastised Roseman, whose upturned palms and bewildered expression conveyed his surprise at Donahoe’s disgust. Lurie respects Donahoe, but Lurie thinks Roseman is a genius. Donahoe has no chance in that fight.

“A couple of the guys that we liked went” after he traded back with Carolina from 70 to 73 in exchange for a sixth-round pick, Roseman said. He then addressed the public disagreement with candor: “These guys spend all year scouting these guys. You get favorites. You get guys that you feel really strongly about. We all do. That’s the fun part of being in the draft room, the emotions of it.”

Nobody was having much fun in the draft room in that moment.

Further complicating matters: Eagles personnel VP Andy Weidl stood 9 feet away, and seemed to shudder as Donahoe berated Roseman. Donahoe gave Weidl his first job, in Pittsburgh, in 1998.

That was two years before Roseman joined the Eagles. Roseman rose faster than Weidl because, in part, he operates without fear. Typically then, on Thursday and Friday, Roseman took some chances. But he also filled pressing needs.

Eagles fans need to look past their Howie-hate, their corner-lust, and their unfulfilled linebacker fantasies, and grow up. The Eagles won their only Super Bowl because they fielded an offensive line that even quarterbacks Carson Wentz and Nick Foles could win with, plus a defensive line even coordinator Jim Schwartz couldn’t sabotage.

Roseman is an easy target, especially in this moment, with raw video of an NFL patrician dismissing him like so much lint. But don’t pile on Howie. Not this weekend. Not after he fortified the Eagles at three positions for the next 10 years, and emerged with an extra first-round pick to boot.

And don’t forget: Eagles All-Pro center Jason Kelce was a sixth-round pick.

So was some old guy who lives in Florida. He’s named Tom Brady.

Beyond the middle of the first round, the first three rounds of the NFL draft remedy situations gradually, not immediately (the final four rounds are crapshoots). To wit: DeVonta Smith, at No. 10, remedies the wide receiver deficit immediately. Appropriately, five-position blocker Landon Dickerson and hybrid grunt Milton Williams fix the most difficult and important deficits -- offensive and defensive line depth and talent -- gradually.

Roseman resisted the pull of the populace by ignoring hyped linebackers and third-tier cornerbacks, even if their name is Asante Samuel (Jr.). This is discipline that, in the case of Penn State’s Micah Parsons, I would have lacked.

» READ MORE: NFL mock draft: Eagles take Penn State LB Micah Parsons in 1st round, WR in 2nd, QB in 3rd | Marcus Hayes

On Friday night, Roseman foiled the Giants’ plans to give quarterback Daniel Jones a receiver that would bedevil the Birds for years. Roseman did so with a painful trade with the Cowboys -- Roseman loves his Day Two picks -- but the ‘Boys demanded a third-rounder in order to move down from No. 10 to No. 12.

In March, Roseman had traded the Eagles’ original pick, No. 6, to the Dolphins in exchange for this year’s No. 12 pick plus the Dolphins’ first-rounder in 2022.

Love him or hate him, and we’ve all done both, Roseman has acted like a responsible leader laying groundwork for long-term success.

Donahoe? He acted like an irritable, fist-shaking cloud-yeller.

Did Donahoe so badly want Aaron Robinson, a slot corner who will need loads of coaching after playing against inferior competition at Central Florida, whom the Giants picked at No. 71? Probably. He’s as sick of watching Eagles corners get toasted as the rest of us.

Did Donahoe so madly desire 320-pound Alim McNeil, the Lions’ pick at No. 72 -- a pigeonholed run-stopper at NC State who rushed the quarterback with the deftness of a monster truck? Maybe. Maybe Donahoe thinks he’s still in Pittsburgh, where he shined in the 1990s.

At Lousiana Tech, Milton Williams proved to be the sort of versatile defensive tackle that suits the NFL’s model of movable pieces: 6-foot-3, 284 pounds, plays inside and out, smart, coachable. Besides, Roseman has a good record here.

Since 2010, when he became GM, Roseman has drafted nine defensive linemen in the first four rounds. Three of his four three first-rounders -- Brandon Graham (2010), Fletcher Cox (2012), and Derek Barnett (2017) -- have been passable (Barnett) to incredible (Cox). Vinny Curry and Bennie Logan were plenty good enough to justify second- and third-round picks. Josh Sweat, a fourth-round end in 2018, had six sacks despite playing just 38 percent of the snaps in 2020, so he could be a straight-up steal. Roseman has really suffered just three defensive-line busts: Daniel Te’o-Nesheim, a third-rounder in 2010; Marcus Smith, a first-rounder in 2014; and Shareef Miller, a fourth-round pick in 2019. That’s 6-for-9.

Maybe we should trust Howie on Milton Williams.

And yes, while Landon Dickerson’s lower body grows more bionic each year -- he’s hurt both ACLs and both ankles since high school -- his ceiling is too enticing to pass up.

» READ MORE: With Alabama OL Landon Dickerson, Howie Roseman rolls the dice again on a medical red flag | Jeff McLane

Roseman learned to scout Hogs at Andy Reid’s elbow. If nothing else, Roseman knows linemen.

Since 2013, the year Roseman first operated without Reid, his offensive overseer, Roseman has drafted seven offensive linemen: Lane Johnson (first round, 2013), Isaac Seumalo (third round, 2016), Halapoulavaati Vaitai (fifth round, 2016), Matt Pryor and Jordan Mailata (seventh round, 2018), Andre Dillard (first round, 2019), and Jack Driscoll (fourth round, 2020). Injury robbed Dillard of his 2020 season, but every one of the others played to some level of proficiency equal to or exceeding his draft slot.

The biggest issue with Roseman drafting offensive linemen is that he hasn’t drafted enough of them. He’s 6-for-7 with linemen.

Maybe we should trust Howie on Landon Dickerson.

The assumption that all of “the scouts” disapproved of the trade and the resulting draft of Williams is a baseless assumption. We only know one scout didn’t approve: Tom Donahoe.

And that scout isn’t the boss. He hasn’t been a boss for 16 years.

Wonder why.