The Eagles can’t afford to splurge on Texas superstar Bijan Robinson — or any running back

It’s hard to say what the Eagles should do with the 10th overall pick in next month’s draft. It’s easy to say what they shouldn’t do.

Don’t draft a kicker. Don’t draft a quarterback. And, for the love of all things Howie, don’t draft a running back.

That last part could be a more difficult proposition than it sounds if Texas All-American Bijan Robinson is on the board. After rushing for 1,580 yards in 2022 and averaging 6.3 yards on 500 carries in his three years with the Longhorns, Robinson is being heralded by draftniks as an elite talent who belongs in the same class as former top-five picks like Saquon Barkley, Ezekiel Elliott, and Leonard Fournette. More than a few name-brand experts have mentioned Robinson as a potential target for the Eagles, with Todd McShay of ESPN and Charles Davis of NFL Network among those who have published mock drafts that have Howie Roseman snagging him at No. 10.

The hype makes some sense, especially when you watch the way Robinson gets in and out of his breaks on tape. At 5-foot-11 and 215 pounds, he has some of the quickest feet you’ll see on a player who is built to run between the tackles. He isn’t as punishing a runner as Elliott or Barkley nor as dynamic a home-run threat as Christian McCaffrey, but what he lacks in raw explosive power or top-end speed he makes up for with his patience, vision and ability to change direction while moving at full throttle. When I watch him run, I see a dead ringer for Edgerrin James, whose Hall of Fame career began when the Colts drafted him at No. 4 overall out of the University of Miami in 1999.

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As for the Eagles as a potential landing spot, well, that makes some sense, too. Now that Miles Sanders has signed a four-year, $25 million contract with the Panthers, the Eagles need to find a replacement for the 259 carries and 1,269 yards that their former second-round pick accounted for last season. Running back may not be a premium position for most teams, but the Eagles are not most teams. They run the ball more often than anybody in the league. No other team is within 50 rushing attempts of the 1,094 that the Eagles offense has generated since Nick Sirianni became head coach. True, that’s largely a function of their quarterback, who has accounted for 304 of those carries over the last two seasons. But the fact remains, the top three running backs on their current roster combined for just 110 attempts last season. The position is so thin that Sirianni could recently be heard talking up Trey Sermon, who has 43 attempts in his first two seasons in the NFL and was cut by the 49ers a year after they drafted him in the third round.

“I can’t tell you how many times at practice he made a cut or you just saw him in his pads or he made a play on a screen or whatever it was and you’re like, ‘Man, this guy has a chance to be really good,’” Sirianni told reporters at the league meetings in Arizona last week.

Even if those aren’t the words of a desperate man, you can certainly see the appeal of pairing a blue-chip talent like Robinson with the running lanes that this Eagles offense generates. In Hurts, they already have one player in their backfield who can change a game with his feet. How would opposing defenses contend with two?

Or, so the logic goes.

Here’s why it’s wrong. The 10th pick in the draft is a place where a team has the potential to add a player who is the cornerstone of a Super Bowl team. But a running back is almost never the cornerstone of such a team. In fact, the last time a team won a title with a running back they drafted in the Top 25 was 2009, when the Saints did it with Reggie Bush. The Rams went to a Super Bowl with Todd Gurley (No. 10 overall), the Broncos with Knowshon Moreno (No. 12) and the Steelers with Rashard Mendenhall (No. 23). But even those players were well short of what you’d call a cornerstone.

Longevity is the first issue with a running back. Gurley, Moreno and Mendenhall were all out of the league after six seasons, five of them with the team that drafted them. Bush lasted 11 seasons, but only five with the Saints.

Think about that. Lane Johnson is about to enter his 11th season with the Eagles since they drafted him at No. 4 overall in 2013. Fletcher Cox has given them 11 seasons since they picked him at No. 12 in 2012. Brandon Graham is about to return for his 14th season with the team since they selected him at No. 13 overall in 2010.

That’s the sort of return on investment a team should be looking for with a top-10 or even top-15 pick.

An even bigger issue than longevity is the fact that history has shown that a team does not need an elite running back to win a championship. The Eagles won one with Jay Ajayi, LeGarrette Blount, and Corey Clement, whom they acquired for a grand total of one fourth-round draft pick and roughly $4 million in salary. The Chiefs’ top two running backs in this year’s Super Bowl cost them a seventh-round pick and less than $2 million in salary. Neither one of those running backs was the guy they actually drafted in the first round: Clyde Edwards-Helaire, the No. 32 overall pick in 2020, was inactive.

Robinson might make some sense if the Eagles can find a way to land him using their own No. 30 pick this season. But Roseman understands value drafting better than most other general managers, and it simply does not make sense to move up much higher than that. The Eagles have a lot of needs right now, tops among them the need to maximize whatever resources they expend when filling those needs. A running back like Robinson might sound like a dream addition to this Eagles offense. But that’s exactly what it should remain: a dream.

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