Philadelphia Eagles: Don’t pull an Ezekiel Elliott with a top-10 draft pick

After turning in a horrendous showing capped off with the most belligerent tank job we’ve seen in South Philly since Ben Simmons was one-and-done-ing it at LSU, the Philadelphia Eagles find themselves with a top-10 pick (sixth overall), a head coaching vacancy, and a roster with enough malleability to be reconfigured as needed.

While the situation may feel dire – and in a lot of ways, it sort of is – there is a whole world of possibilities that have suddenly become available to the Eagles after consistently watching their fortunes regress year over year.

Could the team land their next franchise quarterback in a draft with quite a few intriguing options of varying athletic profiles expected to go in the first round? Or could the Eagles focus their draft mostly on the other side of the ball a la the Carolina Panthers in 2020, and build up an elite defense to make their offense’s job a little easier? Heck, maybe the team will even take a scheme change and transition to a 3-4 defensive front tailor-made for winning NFL games in 2021.

But what the Eagles can’t do – not no way, not no how – is try to hotshot their way back into playoff contention with a shortsighted move designed to win-now.

Why? Well, you don’t want to end up like the Dallas Cowboys, do you?

The Philadelphia Eagles can learn from the Dallas Cowboys’ mistakes.

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In 2015, the Dallas Cowboys were bad.

Despite the same head coach, defensive coordinator, and the brunt of their 12-4 team from 2015 all returning, the Cowboys suffered through a horrible season marred by injuries to Tony Romo that all but destroyed the team’s offense identity and left Jerry’s boys incapable of getting much going in any facet of the game.

The Cowboys finished out the season with a 4-12 record and were awarded the fourth overall pick in the 2016 NFL Draft as a result.

But what would the Cowboys do? Romo turned 36 in April of 2016, and his body was starting to break down. While Jared Goff seemed like a borderline guarantee to secure, they could surely move up a few spots and select a plucky FCS quarterback from Bismark, North Dakota by the name of Carson Wentz. Alternatively, they could have sat pat and secured up their defensive secondary with a shutdown cornerback, given DeMarcus Lawrence an interior counterpart with a defensive tackle like DeForest Buckner, or even add a franchise right tackle like Jack Conklin or Ronnie Stanley.

Surely the world was Jerry Jones’ oyster, and even he couldn’t have messed it up… only he kind of did.

But because Jones was beyond committed to his resident future Sketchers/Corona spokesman 36-year-old quarterback and his team was only a year and change removed from making it to the Division Round of the playoffs, he opted against addressing a long-term position of need with a future All-Pro – instead opting to add the flashiest, most exciting, least-shirted player in the 2016 NFL Draft, Ohio State running back Ezekiel Elliott.

Now let me preface this right from the jump: Elliott is a good football player. He immediately earned Pro Bowl/All-Pro honors as a rookie and was a key cog in vaulting the team back to the playoffs with a 13-3 record behind the arm of 2016 fourth-round pick Dak Prescott.

But since then? Yeah, the Cowboys haven’t been nearly as effective.

Sure, Eliott has still made it to two more Pro Bowls and even led the league in rushing during his third year with the team, but his Cowboys have only cracked double-digit wins twice and have slowly watched their mid-2010s roster crumble with very few players in the pipeline ready to replace aging starters one-for-one.

To make matters worse – or better for fans of the Eagles – if the Cowboys hadn’t landed not one but two once-in-a-generation draft weekend steals in Prescott and right tackle La’el Collins, they probably wouldn’t have even been able to amass a 33-31 record from 2017-20.

And worst/best of all, Elliott has become an incredibly expensive committee back who has consistently lost more and more carries to 2019 fourth-round pick Tony Pollard – who looked pretty darn good in the Cowboys’ Week 15 win over the San Francisco 49ers while logging 90 percent of the team’s offensive snaps.

Needless to say, if the Eagles really do want to make their trip to the top-10 a surprise vacation instead of a forgone postseason destination, they need to avoid making a similar draft day mistake and instead do their best to land a generational building block who could wear a midnight green – or eventually kelly green – jersey into the 2030s.

If the Eagles deem a wide receiver like Ja’Marr Chase or DeVonta Smith to be that player, then draft him. If they instead think Oregon’s left tackle, Penei Sewell, really is the second coming of Jason Peters, then draft him regardless of Jordan Mailata, Andre Dillard, and Jack Driscoll. Heck, if Howie Roseman, Joe Banner, and the rest of the front office brass genuinely believe that a player like Justin Fields, Trey Lance, or Zach Wilson grades out higher than Carson Wentz or Jalen Hurts, they have a borderline obligation to select that player sixth overall.

But what the Eagles can’t do is pick a player for need. They can’t reach for a player because they are a ‘really good scheme fit.’ And they really can’t select a player because they think the Cowboys will pick him a few picks later. The Cowboys went BPA in the 2020 NFL Draft when they picked up CeeDee Lamb out of Oklahoma, and that worked out pretty well. If Roseman opts to bypass players like Patrick Surtain and Micah Parsons to ‘steal’ Kyle Pitts away from Dallas, all that does is make the Eagles worse off and guarantee that Jones will have a better player fall to them a few picks later in the draft.

Who wants to do that?

When the Philadelphia Eagles traded up to secure a premium pick in the 2016 NFL Draft, it was to finally land a marquee player they could build their franchise around after suffering through quarterback limbo in the post-Donovan McNabb-era. In that very same draft, the Dallas Cowboys opted to use their top-10 pick to supercharge an aging offense and cap off the Tony Romo-era with a Super Bowl win. While both teams are back picking in the top-10 once more in 2021 due to a variety of reasons, how they each choose to use their pick could define the futures of either franchise both now and a decade into the future.