Philadelphia Eagles: Howie Roseman continues to makes reckless roster moves

Howie Roseman continues to be reckless with Philadelphia Eagles rookies.

Earlier in the season, Howie Roseman made a roster decision that ultimately blew up in his face pretty hard. He tried to sneak UDFA tight end Noah Togiai through waivers (despite paying him quite a bit of money to sign with the Philadelphia Eagles) as the team set their final 53-man roster. However, the Indianapolis Colts were lurking.

Indy snapped up Togiai instantly. The rookie TE has already logged 52 snaps for the Colts, making a few Twitter highlight reels due to some impressive downfield blocking.

When Dallas Goedert went down due to an ankle injury, the Eagles were forced to rely on the services of Richard Rodgers and Jason Croom (who???). The team even rolled into Week 4 with only two tight ends on the game day roster. Would’ve been a great time to have a freak-athlete rookie TE to lean on.

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While Togiai isn’t some world beater by any stretch of the imagination, and likely would’ve had zero impact on the Eagles current 2020 season, losing him to another team via the waiver wire was a completely unnecessary result. Roseman prioritized the roster spots of guys like Duke Riley and Marcus Epps over a promising rookie, and it came back to burn him. The team has struggled for a long time when it comes to developing young talent, and it surely doesn’t help when guys are flat out stolen away from the team before even seeing the field.

After the Togiai failure, one would hope that Roseman had learned his lesson. Well, he hasn’t. Following the team’s Week 5 loss to Pittsburgh, Roseman released both Casey Toohill and Grayland Arnold as he looked to make room for a returning Will Parks and Vinny Curry. Obviously the plan is to see Toohill and Arnold return back to the practice squad, but is this even a risk worth taking?

Toohill was the team’s seventh-round pick this past offseason, and he thoroughly impressed during the offseason. Arnold had a solid camp as well, and his multi-position versatility is one of the biggest reasons people have been projecting him to have success at the professional level. Once again, is it really worth risking these guys to all 31 other NFL teams just to keep someone like Marcus freakin’ Epps on the roster?

Even a returning Curry, what is the point? Vinny is 30+ years old coming off a hamstring injury whereas Toohill is a 24 year old rookie ripe with athleticism and energy. At 1-3-1, is it really in the team’s best interest to be cutting draft picks in order to make room for aging veterans on one-year contracts? Roseman clearly likely Toohill enough to burn a draft pick on him, why is he now all of the sudden completely expendable?

While it wasn’t a rookie, Roseman also released CB Cre’Von LeBlanc earlier in the offseason so he could shuffle around the 53-man roster. LeBlanc 100% could have signed with another team, and given just how poor Nickell Robey-Coleman has looked at slot corner this year, that would have been a really bad outcome.

*UPDATE: Casey Toohill was claimed by the Washington Football Team. A seventh-round draft pick handed over to a division rival for absolutely nothing in return. Way to go, Howie.*