The Eagles Need To Draft A Player Who Helps Them Now, Not Just in 3 Years

This is a very important draft for the Eagles. Howie has mostly done a good job in the offseason, apart from giving Haason Reddick. But if the Eagles are going to be competitive this season, they need to nail the draft. Which is why they can't just go with the generic "Best Player Available," it needs to be the best player who helps them right now.

There is so much talk about taking the future replacement for Lane Johnson. And that is a need they need to think about. But Lane has at least 2 years left in him, maybe more. Anyone they draft to replace him could be waiting for 2 seasons before they play a snap at RT. That is not a luxury they have with their 1st round pick this year.

There is this narrative that the Eagles need to think of the future and not just the present. It's true, you don't draft someone specifically to help you next year. But that doesn't mean you throw the next two years out the window.

If they take someone who can play RG for 2 years, and then slide to RT whenever Lane retires, awesome. In that case, it would be a player who helps them now, and in the future.

A player like JC Latham would be perfect for that. He played guard his first season at Bama, before sliding over to Tackle. A player like Amarius Mims, who has no experience at guard, and by most accounts is not a good fit at guard, would not be ideal.

They cannot draft someone, who might redshirt for the next two seasons. At least not with their 1st round pick. 2nd round? That is a different conversation. But they have too many needs to take someone who wont play until 2026 at the earliest.

There is also the question of if a RG is the best value, now or long term. Is the jump from Tyler Steen, to whoever they draft larger than the jump from whoever they have at Corner, to who they might draft? Which pick would improve you the most? I don't think its a RG.

The defense is still full of holes. They have 1 starting-caliber corner, 1 healthy starting-caliber safety, and only question marks at linebacker. Those needs don't necessarily have to be addressed with a 1st round pick, but it is the best option. especially at corner when you have a great draft for corners, with at least 5 guys having 1st round grades.

If they trade up for Terrion Arnold or Quinyon Mitchell, that person can potentially help you win next season, and 8 years from now.  They will fill a need, and be among the best players available.

The Eagles have a lot of good young players to build around long-term on offense. Devonta Smith, Landon Dickerson, Jordan Mailata, and Jalen Hurts are all here until for several years into the future.

With that said, the next two years are still their best chance. Not their only chance, but their best one.

AJ Brown technically has 3-years left on his deal. But after this season, the cap number skyrockets. Jalen Hurts cap number skyrockets after the 2025 season. Dallas Goedert has only 2 years left on his deal. Saquon Barkley is pretty much on a 2-year deal, even though there is an option for a 3rd, and Lane Johnson has said he has 2 good years left.

The time to win is now. Take advantage of Hurts still being relatively affordable. Take advantage of having a future Hall of Famer at RT. And take advantage of having Saquon Barkley. Their offense is pretty much guaranteed to be elite for the next two seasons. Now is the time to win something. But their defense needs to be better if they are going to do that.

The 1st round pick should reflect that. Don't lose sight of the future, but also don't obsess so much over it you don't help yourself in the present.

We saw the difference a top Corner can make with trent McDuffie and the Chiefs. We saw the difference good linebackers can make with both the Chiefs and the Niners.

Use this pick to maximize your chance to win right now. You can always address the future of RT in the 2nd round.

For the last two years, I did something that is absolute proof that I have no life. I simulated the Eagles draft 1000 times. It took me a few hours each time just to collect all the results.

Now a year later, I apparently have even less of a life. Because I timesed that by 10 and simulated the draft 10,000 times this year.

I did it by using 3 different Mock Draft tools. Pro Football Focus, Pro Football Network, and ESPN. This way we get a more diverse pool of players, and the results aren't thrown off by 1 website's Big Board, or what they think the Eagles' needs are.

I did 3,333 on each of them, except PFF where I did 3,334 to get an even 10,000.

I should say I originally tried using a 4th website. I did about 50 simulations on NFL Draft Buzz. But when Bo Nix showed up for the Eagles 7 times, and Caleb Williams wasn't even the 1st picka bunch of  times, I thought those results were pretty much worthless.

To be clear, the computer is making this pick. I have no say in the pick or sway over the results. I am just clicking a button 10,000 times, and then recording the result.

With 3 computers, each running a mock draft from each of those websites, I was able to do about 20 drafts per minute. I will let someone else calculate how long it took me to get to get to 10,000 with that pace, but it was over 10 hours.

This is now my 3rd year simulating the Eagles draft way too many times. In 2022, Jordan Davis came in as the most common pick, showing up 329 times. That is who they wound up selecting.

Last year, Jalen Carter was the most common pick, showing up 192 times at pick 10. That is who they eventually selected.

Coincidence? I think so. I am not going to make some bold claim that I developed an infallible method of predicting the picks. Two times does not a pattern make.

But it is funny it got it right both times. And if gets it right this time, I might try to find a way to use these powers to predict the lotto numbers.

The Eagles haven't taken a Corner with a 1st round pick since 2002. PFF seems to think that will change.

Laiatu Latu might led the way here 579 picks. But the next 3 guys are all Corners. 5 corners in total showed up with PFF. With Cooper DeJean being the most common one. Corner led all positions with 1,130 picks out of 3,334.

But while cornerback led the way with total picks, they still do know who Howie is. Because the Offensive Line had the most total players show up. 6 different O-linemen showed up at least once, for a total of 961 picks.

Meanwhile, there was 925 simulations where they picked a defensive lineman, with 5 total showing up at least once. Add that together with the O-Line, and 1,886 times the pick was someone on the line.

PFN was even more corner-happy than PFF. 1,870 of the picks were corners. Over half the 3,333 total simulations. Cooper DeJean led the way there. He was also the most often drafted corner at PFF and the 2nd most drafted player total.

Behind him was Nate Wiggins, with Chop Robinson being the most often drafted non-corner. After finishing 1st with PFF, Laiatu Latu gets another top-5 finish

Once again, Cooper DeJean leads the way. I will share the full results between the 3 sites next, but you don't need to even be good at math to guess who will come in at number 1.

We do see a somewhat new name in 2nd place though. Quinyon Mitchell. He never showed up with PFF and only showed up 29 times on PFN. But here his name popped up 536 times, just narrowly behind DeJean at 578 times.

It's another good showing for Latu as well, he came in 4th with 344 total appearances.

As you may have assumed from seeing the numbers from the individual websites, Cooper DeJean ran away with this one. Nearly 500 more picks than the next guy, who was Laiatu Latu.

Corners in general made up 3 of the top 5 spots.

Last year at pick 30, there were 29 total players. At pick 10 there was 19. So as you get deeper into the draft, there will likely be a wider range of options.

You would think doing 10 times as many simulations would expand those numbers, but that didn't seem to be the case. After a while, the same names keep showing up, with just a few outliers sneaking in.

Cornerback ran away with this. Over 2000 more than any other position. Corners made up 44.3% of all selections. The 3 sites are in agreement, corner is the Eagles' biggest need. That combined with it being a deep corner draft, has them being paired with the Eagles at a crazy rate.

Even if you combine Offensive and Defensive Linemen, they only end up with 20 more selections than corners.

Most people in the know say the Eagles will either go corner, OL, or DL. So in that regard, this feels accurate. Will they actually go corner for once? We will find out on Thursday night. But the computer is very confident that will be the case. And it is very confident it will come in the form of Cooper DeJean.

How much did DeJean dominate this simulation? Iowa was number 1 on this list even though he is the only player from there to show up in these mock drafts.

Alabama came 2nd, and that was very much a team effort. 4 players, Kool-Aid, Arnold, Turner, and Latham showed up. Kool-Aid showed up the most, but all 4 had at least 200 appearances.

Georgia seems on track to break the trend. Only 2 showed up at all, Amarius Mims and Ladd McConkey. Mims came 5th overall, and that was enough to put Georgia 5th overall, but McConkey was pretty much an aberration, showing up just 32 times out of 10,000.