There was a revealing moment early Friday morning at the Howie Roseman and Nick Sirianni media availability.
Deflecting question after question about whether the Eagles see Jihaad Campbell as an edge rusher or off-ball linebacker, Roseman steadfastly refused to answer: “We view him as a front-seven player who's got incredible versatility and a skillset to do both those things.”
When someone tried a shrewd end-around and asked Sirianni for a player comparison for Campbell, the G.M. interrupted the head coach when Sirianni was about to answer: “Those are conversations we have with our staff and that puts coach in a bad spot.”
Because if Sirianni had made a comparison between Campbell and an established NFL veteran, it would have defined Campbell as either a linebacker or an edge.
And Howie was just not going to let that happen.
Because there’s no reason on April 25 to make any definitive decision where a 21-year-old kid who was just drafted will play in the NFL.
So for now, Campbell isn’t an off-ball linebacker and he’s not an edge rusher. He’s a football player that Roseman believes is going to be a huge force as a pro.
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Where is he going to line up? Wherever Vic Fangio wants him.
“I don't want to put this player in that box,” Roseman said. “This guy can grow into anything you want.”
After moving up one spot late Thursday night, the Eagles selected Alabama’s Campbell with the 31st pick in the first round of the draft.
Did they draft a 1st-round linebacker for the first time since Jerry Robinson in 1979? Did they draft a first-round edge for the second time in three years?
We won’t get an idea until OTAs or maybe even training camp. But we won’t really know until we see him on the field in September.
For now, all we really know is that the Eagles got a super productive and positional versatile wrecking machine with pass rush ability, physicality vs. the run and coverage skill.
“You just look around the league, the teams that we have to get through to get where we want to go, they have fast explosive quarterbacks, players in their backfield that we've got to bring down at all levels of our defense, and we need a tremendous amount of front seven players to contain those guys,” Roseman said.
“It's always been a priority for us. This doesn't deviate from what we believe. We believe in affecting the passing game on offense and defense, and this guy can affect the passing game on defense. …
“This was a top-10 player on our board. When you're in a draft and you're picking at the end of the first round, you don't (usually) have an opportunity to get a top-10 player on your board.”
Where does Campbell fit in?
The Eagles have all-pro Zack Baun and Nakobe Dean at off-ball linebacker, and Roseman said this pick has nothing to do with Dean or the way he’s recovering from his knee injury. They have Nolan Smith and Jalyx Hunt on the edge as well as potentially Bryce Huff.
Just think of Campbell not as another linebacker or another edge rusher. Think of him as another football player added to a top-ranked Super Bowl-championship defense.
“Vic has done a tremendous job with kind of educating me on the way that he looks at things and the way I look at things, and we have a lot of these conversations about it, and obviously, those are great conversations for me. I'm continuing to learn every day,”
Roseman said. That's the beautiful part about the job that we have.
“But at the end of the day, you see what's going on in the league. And Zack Baun's a great example. I mean these guys, they can rush from the edge, they can play in space, they can affect the quarterback from depth, from the edge, and that's what we're looking
for. We're looking for guys like that.
“And the league has changed. I think the league is a speed game, and when you have guys with those kinds of explosive qualities, you want to get as many as you can.”
Campbell grew up an Eagles fan in Erial, Camden County, and spent his first few years of high school at Timber Creek before finishing at prep sports academy IMG in Bradenton, Fla.
Asked his favorite players as a kid, Campbell named Darren Sproles, LeSean McCoy, DeSean Jackson, Michael Vick and Jeremy Maclin, among others. He said his dad goes back to the Randall Cunningham days.
“This is a guy who was recruited … by Alabama as an edge rusher,” Roseman said. “Hand in the dirt edge rusher. They had some injuries at Alabama. They played him off the ball.
“You see his explosiveness and his speed, and really, it's kind of interesting, and we talked about this a lot. You see Penn State - give them a lot of credit for what they've done. They've had guys off the ball move to edge rushers. Obviously, their last two guys who've been drafted really high (Micah Parsons and Abdul Carter), they started off the ball and they moved to edge rushers.
“Vic does a tremendous job with getting guys who have pass rush ability to be versatile players like that. I think what's really fun is that those guys who have that versatility can go out on the edge and get pressure as a rusher and he's got speed, he's got power as an edge rusher, he was trained as an edge rusher, and then, he's got the versatility to play off the ball and blitz from depth and play in space, in pass coverage, as an off-ball linebacker.
“So for us, we always want to improve the front seven and we view him as a front seven player who's got incredible versatility and a skill set to do both those things. And the appeal is that he's got this rush skill set. And he's 21 years old. He turned 21 on Feb. 24, so he's got upside to grow and get bigger and his frame is such that he can put on more weight and more strength.”
If not for a shoulder injury he suffered last year, Campbell would have been a top-15 pick. Probably a top-10 pick.
In the few days before the draft, Roseman began to sense that Campbell might be drifting down the first round toward where the Eagles picked. He tried to trade up to No. 23 with the Packers to take Campbell, but the asking price was too high.
He got him anyway eight picks later.
“Really excited to have him,” he said. “Wasn't really something we anticipated. Understand some of the other teams may have reasons for taking other players, but for us, this is a really easy pick. A guy who can affect the quarterback, a guy who can affect the passing game. For us, it was a no-brainer.”
