This is far greater than a one-night win. The NFL Draft, in the eyes of league general managers like Howie Roseman, understand the importance of the weekend ahead. Thursday night's Round 1 will gain the most attention, but the way to build a deep and robust and sustainable roster is to win in rounds one through seven and then hit on some gems in the post-Draft signing frenzy.

"You look at it like you have a chance to add to your roster, to continue to add to the core and bring on board as much depth and talent as possible," Roseman said. "We're excited with that. Everyone here puts in a full year of work on this, so this weekend is when it all comes to fruition."

The Eagles have eight selections as it stands now in this 2026 NFL Draft, and, as always with Roseman, that number is subject to change and, given the history here, likely will in some way, shape, or form. Roseman looks at each draft selection as an asset to keep or move in a variety of ways – trade for a veteran, move up in a round, move back during the weekend or, as he has done in the past, trade for future compensation.

Anything is possible.

What is important is maximizing the value of every one of those assets.

"We are building a roster. There is no deadline," he said. "This is always a work in progress."

Roseman looks at the roster on his wall at the Jefferson Health Training Complex and he sees players like defensive tackle Moro Ojomo, a seventh-round pick in 2023, linebacker Jeremiah Trotter Jr., a fifth-round pick in 2024, outside linebacker Jalyx Hunt, a third-round pick in 2024. Cornerback Cooper DeJean, a 2025 All-Pro player, was selected in Round 2 of 2024. The list goes on and on and on, and you see that good players come from all rounds in the NFL Draft, even after Mr. Irrelevant's name has been called in Round 7.

"Every player you add to the roster is valuable. Every player is given a chance to be the best version of himself and help this football team," Roseman said.

The strength of the Eagles' college scouting department has been on full display in recent years as the team has built a powerful roster largely through the NFL Draft. These are men and women who are on the talent beat for 11 months, writing reports and gathering as much information as possible so that when this weekend finally arrives, the best decisions are made.

The strategy is to stay true to the evaluation board, where players are ranked in tiers and then names are called based on the availability of those names when the Draft is live and the clock is ticking.

"I feel like the draft is its own entity. You go into the draft and you have to take the best players available, certainly within a stack," Roseman said recently when asked about the wide receiver position. His answer applies to every position, truly. "When you talk about best players available, it's hard to stack guys and go, 'Hey, this guy's six, this guy's ninth.' But you do it based on tiers, based on tiers of the quality of the player. So within that tier that you've graded guys equally, you have a position that you think is more important to your scheme to where you are from a team building perspective, you may take the eighth guy over the sixth guy, but they're going to be in the same tier.

"And so I think the biggest mistake we can make is assuming we know what the team's going to look like a year from now, two years from now and missing out on a player because we have a perceived need and then we don't fill the need because the player's not good enough. I think that's probably a long-winded way to say that nothing that we've done up until this point will affect the valuations that we have on draft day."

Seven rounds. Eight picks (for now). A full post-draft frenzy to win. It is a long and extremely involved weekend coming.

First up, Round 1. Roseman and the Eagles are prepared for all scenarios.

"I think we go into this draft being very comfortable with having 23 guys we're ready to take. We're there ready and prepared for that," Roseman said. "If something happens where somebody who's higher on our board than 23rd is available, we'll be ready for that. If there's an opportunity that we think makes sense to move up based on the value of that player, we'll move up. If we have multiple guys at our spot and there's a trade that makes sense to move back, we'll move back."

Anything can happen, right? With Roseman, as we have witnessed, it usually does happen, much to the benefit of this football team.