You’re a real ding-dong if you look at the Philadelphia Eagles roster and say their raw talent is the reason the 2025 season went into the garbage disposal. It is very complete, and it’s chock full of high-end starting talent.
It’s not easy to replace a veteran on Howie Roseman’s team. The way that he’s built his roster is that you’re one of the highest-paid players in the NFL, you’re on a rookie contract, or you’re a lottery ticket on a cheap contract.
Most of the veterans who can be replaced in the draft are the third option, but there is one guy who is in a particularly difficult spot. Let’s start with him.
Tyler Steen, Right Guard
Tyler Steen has had a little bit of a complicated career with the Eagles. They drafted him early in the third round (65th overall) of the 2023 draft. He was coming out of Alabama, and the Eagles had not only had a lot of success with drafting players from that school, but Jeff Stoutland had a penchant for turning day-two draft picks into otherworldly offensive linemen.
It seems like the plan was that he would compete with Cam Jurgens for the starting right guard spot, and if he didn’t get it, then he would ride the bench, develop, and become a starter.
He did the first two things. When Jason Kelce retired after the 2023 season, Cam Jurgens took over at center, and Steen was supposed to take over as the starter. Onto the 2024 offseason:
We all kind of thought the Eagles would draft an offensive lineman in the draft to be Lane Johnson’s eventual replacement. That didn’t happen, so two days after the draft, they signed the mammoth Mekhi Becton.
Becton had his own struggles. He was the New York Jets’ first-round pick in 2020, but he couldn’t stay healthy; the athleticism and all that was there, but his body just kept getting dinged up.
During training camp before the 2024 season, Steen had an ankle injury. That opened the window for Becton to come in, and apparently, he was amazing and won the starting job.
Yada yada yada, Saquon ran for over 2,000 yards. Yada yada yada, the Eagles were the best football team of the past decade and dominated Super Bowl LIX. And then we hit the 2025 offseason.
Becton ended up signing with the Chargers, so it was Steen’s time to roll, and he did good.
The Eagles’ offensive line was pretty awful in 2025, but you never watched a game and consistently saw Steen whiffing on blocks or getting put on his back… But he wasn’t great… and that’s where he might lose his job.
Every passing year, there’s a better and better chance that the Eagles draft Lane Johnson’s replacement. If that happens in this year’s draft, you would hope that they would be drafting a guy who can play both guard and tackle.
In a perfect world, that kind of guy is competing with Steen for that starting right guard job. In an even more perfect world, that guy wins the job so that he can play next to Lane Johnson for an entire season.
Unfortunately for Steen, that means he’d once again have to sit on the back burner. But for the Eagles as a team, the guy who takes over at right tackle is going to be a lot better if he gets to spend a season playing next to the best right tackle in the world… Ideally.
Marcus Epps, Safety
This is both simple and tricky: Marcus Epps has given the Philadelphia Eagles a whole lot of steadiness at safety during his five seasons with the team… But he’s not great, and Vic Fangio’s defense is a whole lot better with great safeties.
There’s a very particular situation in the draft where a player like Caleb Downs (Ohio State) drops low enough for the Eagles to either move down and draft him or sit and pick if he slides to the 23rd pick.
That would be fantastic… Except that means that the Eagles’ starting safeties in Week 1 would be Drew Mukuba (who missed most of his rookie season with a jacked-up ankle) and a rookie.
Fangio’s not going to want that, especially coming off of two seasons with veteran safeties leading his defensive backfield. He’s said that you can add a loss to your record for every rookie that you start.
So, yeah. It’d be great if the Eagles could upgrade at safety, but it would be a very young and very inexperienced group. We don’t know how much longer Fangio is going to coach, and it’d be a bummer to have such an extreme potential liability in the defensive backfield.
Grant Calcaterra, Tight End 2
The Eagles bucked a trend three years ago. The year that Brent Celek turned 28 years old, they drafted Zach Ertz to be his replacement. It took a couple of seasons, but Ertz ended up taking over, and he was awesome.
The year that Ertz turned 28 years old, the Eagles drafted Dallas Goedert. It took a couple of seasons, but Goedert ended up taking over, and he was (and is) awesome. Goedert is now 31 years old, and the Eagles just re-signed him to a one-year deal.
For the past three seasons, I’ve been predicting that the Eagles would draft a tight end… and they most certainly have not.
Kenyon Sadiq (Oregon) is the best tight end in the draft this year, and he’s the best by kind of a lot. But for some reason, the better draftniks have him sliding pretty far in the draft. If that happens and he’s available even at the 18th overall pick, it would be crazy if Howie Roseman didn’t try to make a trade to move up to get him.
I’m not going to sit here and tell you that Sadiq would walk into the building and automatically be TE1; historically, that’s not been the case. However, he would absolutely jump over Grant Calcaterra on the depth chart and be TE2.
If you watch pretty much any running play from the 2024 or 2025 season where Calcaterra is on the field, you’ll see him absolutely chunk it on a block. To be fair, that’s not completely on him because blocking isn’t his game; he’s a receiving tight end, through and through.
However, Sadiq is both a receiving tight end and he’s more than willing to stick his head in the meat and block. The guy is infinitely more versatile and could easily take over as the TE2 for the Eagles in 2026.
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