Many teams are beginning to view the NFL draft as throwing darts at a board. Front offices are starting to realize there's an incredible amount of unpredictability in the draft, and that it's hard to beat.
To counteract the randomness of it all, many teams are looking to stockpile as many picks as possible, in order to increase their chances of hitting. Among those teams is the Philadelphia Eagles. Philly's owner Jeffrey Lurie recently spoke to the media, and echoed that sentiment, according to Dave Spadaro of the team's official website.
“We believe in volume. We're not cocky enough to feel that you're going to draft way better than anybody else, and it's very important to create volume,” Lurie declared.
Lurie explained the team's outlook for the next couple of drafts, saying “this draft we're going to have good volume, especially in the top of the draft, two twos (second-round picks) and two fours (fourth-round picks) to go with our one (first-round pick), and next year we're going to have quite a few draft choices.
It's very important, so when you look ahead over the next 13 months, we're going to be adding about 20 draft choices.”
The Eagles are one of the most analytical front office's out there, so it's not surprising to see them take this approach. In his full comments, which are well worth a read, Lurie emphasized the need to continuously get younger through the draft.
Based on Lurie's comments, it sounds like the Eagles are going to continue to trade away veteran players for draft picks when there's a good opportunity, like they just did with Michael Bennett.
The Eagles have completed changed their philosophy as a franchise, and given the recent results, it's clearly been working.
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