In the world of Howie Roseman, preparations for the 2026 season started long, long ago, as far back as September of 2025 when the college scouts hit the road and started writing up prospective NFL players.

Now we're on the final stretch before it all truly begins: Roseman is at the NFL Scouting Combine with the Eagles' contingent watching the workouts and conducting key interviews. Free agency starts in two weeks. The NFL Draft? Just five weeks after that.

It's here, folks, and Roseman has a plan in place to get the Eagles where they know they belong.

"I think from a big picture perspective, we want to build a team that every year has a chance to compete for championships, that drafts really well, and signs their own players and just sporadically goes into free agency. That's what we're trying to do," Roseman said. "And sometimes as much as you want to add from outside and you want to change it up, you got to make a decision to keep the players you know have played well and are part of your culture.

"Can we keep all our guys considering we have, for example, a lot of key defensive players coming off rookie deals in the next few years? No, we are going to have to make choices. For us to sign them, that's gonna limit some flexibility with outside players. ... Everything we do at this point is a trade-off. If we do this, we're gonna have to get rid of that. But I think that's the right way really to build teams here, to draft, develop, re-sign. And I know that's not flashy.

"That doesn't mean that we can't do splashy things, but from a broad perspective, if we can keep our players, if we can keep a lot of these young, really good players that we know that we live with, so we know who they are as people, and then it's like a cake, it's like a layer cake. Then you build on top of it with more good draft picks and more good young players, and then the cycle starts again. That's ideally how we'd like to do that. So, that's my little macro vision of how this works and how this should work. And I think last year, I said to you guys, over a two-year period, it's going to be hard for us, unless we make major moves to subtract, to really make some sort of splash move that costs money because we like the players we have drafted and want them as a big part of our next few years as well."

Translation: The Eagles want continuity, want to keep as many of their quality players as possible, and that could mean a limit on what they are able – or interested – to do in free agency with players on the street.

What the Eagles want to do is keep as many of their top-level players as possible, continue to win in the NFL Draft, approach free agency judiciously, and develop the entire roster, top to bottom.

That includes the 2025 Rookie Class, which should have a greater impact moving forward.

"I have a lot of confidence in the players in that group and understanding we've been very fortunate that over the last few years we've had some rookie classes that right away have taken off, but we also know historically that there's growth," Roseman said. "There's growth with young players. Obviously, Jihaad (Campbell, first-round draft pick in 2025), a unique situation with the depth at that (linebacker) position. Incredibly talented, hard-working, high-character player who's got incredible potential. (Safety) Drew (Mukuba) got hurt, which really hurt him and was a guy that we were really counting on.

"And then the Day 3 guys. The Day 3 guys, they have talent in their bodies. We've got to develop these guys. The Year 1 to Year 2 for the Day 3 guys is even more important than it is normally for the Day 1 and Day 2 guys because they're getting so much attention because they're playing, but I'm excited about that group and expecting them to take another step and counting on them to increase their roles. And I'm mostly talking about the Day 3 guys because obviously those first two guys had an opportunity to start and play."

The plan is in place and now it is time to execute and here, right now, is where the puzzle starts to come together and for the fans waiting since January, the action is about to paint the picture of who the 2026 Eagles will become.