Top 10 Prospect On Eagles Draft Boards Falls In Their Laps At End Of First Round

Eagles general manager Howie Roseman might have just hit another home run in the draft, doing so in the late innings of Thursday night's NFL Draft. Picking last in the first round, it’s not often that a player in the top 10 on your draft board is still around as the clock sped toward midnight.

Jihaad Campbell was, though, and the Eagles had him in their top 10. It wasn’t until just a couple of days ago that they thought maybe they had a shot at the Alabama linebacker. That shot became reality when they traded up one spot with the Kansas City Chiefs, going from No. 32 to No. 31 by dealing away one of their four fifth-round picks (No. 164), and selected Campbell.

“Excited to have him, really excited to have him,” said the GM in the early hours of Friday morning. “…We got enough information before the draft that we started to feel like it was a possibility in the last few days. We had gone through scenarios where he was going to fall. We knew that there was probably a sweet spot that we could try to get up at, and we had done a lot of planning about that.”

The reason for the fall was surgery for a torn left labrum just last month. Roseman isn’t concerned about the injury or when Campbell may be ready to return. He called the pick a long-term investment in the player.

“Our guys had an opportunity to see him at the Combine and the re-checks and we’re very excited about what he’s going to bring to the team,” he said. “From our perspective, all that stuff will be sorted out. This wasn’t a need pick. This was for us we had tremendous passion about and somebody when we started the process and continued through the process was very high on our boards.

“We have to look at the draft that way. Obviously, there were other players we liked at the spot we were picking but this stood out to us. Very excited to get him and we didn’t want to lose him.”

To make sure they got him they went up one spot, which is what they did in 2023 when they moved up from No. 10 to 9 with the Bears to land Jalen Carter.

“We made a small trade up just to be sure we could get him,” said Roseman. “There were a lot of trades in the 20s so we wanted to make sure that someone didn’t jump ahead of us.”

The Eagles also aren’t sure where he will play, whether he will be with the assistant coach Jeremiah Washburn’s defensive ends and outside linebackers or Bobby King’s inside linebackers.

At 6-3, 235, he can do both and did do both at Alabama. This past season, he made 117 tackles, the most since DeMeco Ryans had 115 in 2003. It’s the eighth-highest total in Alabama’s storied history, and he is now one of five players with Alabama ties on the Eagles’ roster, along with Jalen Hurts, DeVonta Smith, Landon Dickerson, Eli Ricks, and Byron Young.

Five of the Eagles last six first-round picks have come from either Alabama or Georgia. The only outlier is Quinyon Mitchell who played at Toledo but Alabama wanted him if he would have gone ito the transfer portal.

“We think he’s a versatile player who can do a lot of different things,” said head coach Nick Sirianni. “The main thing that you see is the energy that he plays with, the speed that he plays with, and when you’re playing with a relentless effort that he plays with, that fits on defense.”