At first look, many in NFL circles have mistaken Adam Berry for the general manager of the Cleveland Browns, Andrew Berry. The reason is pretty simple. The two aren't just brothers; they are twins.
"Anytime I'm at an NFL event like the Combine, it doesn't matter whether I'm wearing Eagles gear or not. I'm always getting, 'Hi Andrew!' It kind of takes you a little bit back to high school," Berry said.
Both twins played college football in the Ivy League. Andrew played at Harvard and Adam was a wide receiver at Princeton. However, while Andrew went into NFL scouting right out of college, Adam crossed the Hudson River to work on Wall Street. The high-pressure environment reminded him of being back in the locker room.
"The trading floor is made up of a lot of former college athletes, and part of that is because it is competitive," Berry said. "There is a scoreboard every day. You know, it feeds that competitive drive. There was a natural transition from being a collegiate athlete, being a collegiate football player, to going in that type of environment."
By chance, Executive Vice President/General Manager Howie Roseman was brought in by Berry's firm as a keynote speaker during a client conference. As a senior member, Berry was asked to work on the presentation with Roseman – an exploration of connections between football and business. A few days after the conference, Roseman asked the former Princeton Tiger if he was open to pivoting from finance to football operations.
"I did not actually think he was serious about it. I thought he was just joking," Berry said. "My response was, 'Wow, he's just really charismatic and that was a really nice thing for him to say.'"
It wasn't until Roseman reached out to Andrew, who served as the Eagles' vice president of football operations in 2019, over at the Browns that Berry realized that the offer was serious.
"(Roseman) had a vision for my career, the things that he would have me working on. I discussed it with him, with my family, with mentors," Berry said. "It's such a unique and rare opportunity that you just can't take that for granted, and you can't pass up something that unique."
Football had already been a central part of Berry's life. Aside from being a college receiver, Berry's father, Drew, grew up in Texas, where football was "religion." With his brother being in the industry since college, football was always a defining part of Berry's relationship with his family.
After 14 years on Wall Street, Berry was officially hired as the Eagles' director of football operations and strategy. Berry's familiarity with numbers helped him transition into an NFL front office, working with the salary cap, contracts, and analytics. Roseman expected Berry to learn everything behind football operations, including college scouting, pro scouting, and player development.
"I'm incredibly grateful that he's been my boss and that he's such a visionary and so open-minded and so creative," Berry said of Roseman. "Being around him and working with him, it's really hard not to pick up some of those things and those awesome qualities."
Berry was promoted to assistant general manager this offseason in just his third year with the organization. Roseman is known to look for leaders from different backgrounds to be part of the organization. To Berry, that's "part of the beauty."
"It allows us to prevent groupthink," Berry said. "And you can get to the best solutions possible because everyone's coming from different perspectives and different experiences.
"A lot of my role is being able to work across multiple departments, being able to take the information and take the analysis that we're doing in a bunch of different verticals and use that and bring it all together to support Howie as a decision-maker."
With Andrew as the general manager of the Cleveland Browns and Adam as the Eagles' assistant general manager, Berry concedes that it can get a little competitive between the two at times. But overall, the former Wall Street executive is enjoying the experience for himself.
"At some point you're standing on the sideline pregame and you're like, 'I'm at work right now,'" Berry said. "You just think about how fortunate and how lucky you are that I get to watch football as part of my job for a living. That's something that I will never take for granted because I think it really is truly special." – Written by Caroline Connor
