Howie Roseman’s Obsession
He isn’t finished. That’s the running joke (It isn’t really a joke, because it’s true!) around the NovaCare Complex about Philadelphia Eagles general manager Howie Roseman.
Whether it’s toward the end of a season or in the free-agency days or the NFL Draft period or at any time in the summer or early fall, that is the expectation for Howie Roseman.
He isn’t finished.
This is an obsession,
a very real one, for the man who crafts and curates and looks for ways to make the Eagles a better football team now, two months from now, a season away. He has balls in the air all day, every day, and if your dream is to become an NFL general manager and you want to follow in Roseman’s footsteps, you need to understand that if you aren’t living it, breathing it, ruminating in it every day, then you just aren’t going to succeed.
“I go to sleep, and it’s literally what I’m thinking about, and then when I wake up, it is the same thing,” Roseman said. “This is my responsibility, to do everything I can to make this football team as good as it can be. To do my part. We have a lot of people here working hard to win football games, and I am doing everything I can to hold up my end and give us the best chance to win football games.”
The body of work Roseman has put together in his time with the Eagles is impressive, and he is known for good reason as one of the very best at what he does in the extremely competitive world of the NFL. He’s been with the Eagles for 26 seasons, after writing letters to every NFL team asking for a job upon his graduation from Fordham Law School, starting as an intern and then joining the organization as a salary cap staff counsel when the team was headquartered at Veterans Stadium.
Roseman, you see, has been along for the franchise’s rise through the Andy Reid days, the brief jaunt with Chip Kelly that changed the course of Roseman’s career, and then through the triumphant days of Doug Pederson (Super Bowl LII!) and now Nick Sirianni (Super Bowl LIX!). He learned every bit of the way a football franchise works along the way – how to build a roster and work with a coaching staff, how to evaluate talent, the right way to structure contracts, the power to navigate the trade waters, and so much more.
The low point of his career was when Kelly, the head coach in Philadelphia from 2013 until 2015 who was fired with one game remaining in the regular season, relieved Roseman of his roster-building powers and moved Roseman’s office to the other side of the NovaCare Complex, away from the football operations side of the building. Instead of sulking and brooding, Roseman used the time wisely, visiting sports teams around the world to see how they operated. He gained from the demotion.
And when Kelly was gone, Roseman rose back to power. Two seasons later, the Eagles won their first Super Bowl.
“I didn’t put my head in the sand and just say, ‘Everyone’s wrong.’ I felt like I had to look into myself and figure out a way to make people know I cared about them and make time for relationships,” Roseman said. “Sometimes when you’re in your job, when you’re in a busy job, you kind of overlook some of those things, and I felt that that wasn’t the right thing to do, and how was I going to work on that, and I thought that was the most important thing because I care about a lot of people here. They’re family to me. So, for people not to know how you feel whether that’s your friends or your family, that’s hurtful to me.”
Twice, Roseman has been named the NFL Executive of the Year, and he and former New York Giants general manager George Young are the only men in league history to both win that award and multiple Super Bowls. He wins in trades, free-agency additions, in-season moves and long-range planning.
Not every season ends with a Lombardi Trophy, of course. The Eagles have had a roller-coaster 2025 and Roseman is on the case. Always on the case. He wants more. He wants success. He wants it all.
Obsession is his middle name.
“I feel a responsibility to our players to do whatever I can to help them,” Roseman said after making a trade-deadline deal to acquire edge player Jaelan Phillips. “The players work so hard and make so many sacrifices, and to not do everything I can to help us would be a disservice to them, to everyone. We have a chance here and I’m excited we were able to get some things done that I think, we all think, will make us a better football team.”
The job isn’t done. The job is never done. There is another game, another season, another mountain to climb. For Howie Roseman, the challenges never end. The goals never change.
