Howie Roseman isn’t surprised by Saquon Barkley’s success. His calculated roster building has the Eagles in the Super Bowl.

Back in his early years with the Eagles, Howie Roseman kept the rosters of the final four teams in the playoffs in his office. The general manager would pore over each squad, going line by line and analyzing how his team stacked up against the league’s best.

These days, Roseman doesn’t need a physical copy of those rosters, especially for one particular team. He doesn’t need to look it up online. Now that the Kansas City Chiefs are perennial Super Bowl contenders, winning three of their four appearances in the last five years, Roseman can’t shake their personnel from his psyche.

“The Chiefs are in my head,” Roseman said with a laugh.

Roseman calls the Chiefs the “best of the best.” In order for the Eagles to compete with the best, Roseman has had to think about how to beat the best. That endeavor starts with the front office, he said, and the front office starts with him. The last few years of roster building spearheaded by Roseman gave way to the Eagles’ success in 2024, culminating in their second Super Bowl appearance in three seasons.

Come Super Bowl LIX, Roseman will have a second chance to see if his efforts were enough to dethrone the Chiefs. It isn’t lost on him that Andy Reid, the man who helped him earn his general manager title in 2010, will be on the opposite sideline on Sunday. Roseman still feels comfortable soliciting Reid’s opinion, just not during the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl or the week leading up to a regular-season matchup.

“I think that when I’m talking to him, I’m not necessarily thinking, ‘Hey, I’m thinking about this move to try to beat you, finally, in a Super Bowl,’” Roseman said. “But obviously, they’re the standard.”

When the Eagles have a good offseason — both in terms of free agency and the draft — Roseman said it leads to success during the regular season. He noted that the three best offseasons his front office has had led to three Super Bowl appearances in 2018, 2023, and now 2025.

The impact of the 2024 offseason on the trajectory of the Eagles’ playoff run is undeniable. Saquon Barkley’s three-year, $37.75 million free-agent contract headlined the offseason, serving as a contrast to Roseman’s typical aversion to spending big money on running backs. Nine months and 2,447 rushing yards later, Roseman reiterated that signing Barkley was “not a hard trigger to pull.”

“I’m really not surprised by any of this,” Roseman said. “And I don’t say that in an arrogant way. It’s based on who he is. Nothing to do with me. Because this is who he’s always been, and I’m just glad everyone gets to see that.”

» READ MORE: Saquon Barkley envisioned being in a position to win a Super Bowl long before wearing Eagles green

But that big-name signing wasn’t the only addition that proved pivotal for the 2024 Eagles. In fact, various players whom Roseman signed to one-year deals whose roles weren’t immediately certain ended up having an enormous impact on the team’s success. Zack Baun, the first-team All-Pro and Pro Bowl inside linebacker who was a depth edge rusher with the New Orleans Saints, is the most notable among them.

Roseman called Baun a “targeted player,” signing him on the first day of free agency. At his floor, Baun could be the Eagles’ best special-teams player, according to Roseman. He also had the skill set to evolve into a versatile edge rusher in Vic Fangio’s defense. Andrew Van Ginkel, who formerly played for Fangio with the Miami Dolphins, thrived in a similar defensive role last season.

Baun exceeded those projections. He earned the starting inside linebacker gig out of training camp alongside Nakobe Dean and emerged as a turnover-forcing machine on his way to becoming a finalist for the Associated Press defensive player of the year.

» READ MORE: Eagles’ Zack Baun, ‘a superstar, mega-athlete,’ is still growing as an NFL linebacker

Baun wasn’t the only low-risk, high-reward free-agent addition who paid off. Coming out of the draft, Roseman said the front office knew that it wanted to add more competition along the offensive line. With Cam Jurgens moving from right guard to center to take over for Jason Kelce, his vacated spot was up for grabs. Two days after the draft, the Eagles signed Mekhi Becton, a former tackle with the New York Jets, to a one-year deal.

Becton embraced the opportunity and earned the starting gig at right guard, helping pave the way to Barkley’s success in the running game throughout the season. Roseman called it an “easy decision” to add a “really talented” player who was still available long after free agency began. He wasn’t so sure Becton could say the same, given the uncertain nature of his future as an Eagles starter.

“We had some guys competing for that job and nobody was going to say, ‘Hey, you’re the guy,’” Roseman said. “But to his credit, he wanted to be here. He wanted to be coached by [offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland] and he’s done a phenomenal job.”

In order to pay free agents like Barkley or reward their own like Jalen Hurts with hefty contracts, Roseman also needed to fill out the roster with young, inexpensive, impactful players through the draft. The reshaping of the defense from the No. 30-ranked group in points allowed in 2023 to No. 2 in 2024 was fueled primarily through the Eagles’ efforts to draft, develop, and prime their draft picks for starting roles.

Roseman pushed back on the notion that the process of retooling the defense began in the 2024 offseason with the selections of cornerbacks Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean in the first two rounds of the draft. The general manager goes all the way back to the 2022 draft when discussing the young, reinvigorated defense, starting with the selections of nose tackle Jordan Davis and Dean in Rounds 1 and 3, respectively.

» READ MORE: Meet the Moms: Inside the ‘sisterhood’ that supports the rise of the Eagles’ homegrown Philly Dawgs defense

He continued to tap Georgia for defensive players in 2023 with the additions of defensive tackle Jalen Carter and outside linebacker Nolan Smith in the first round. Roseman had a trove of young defensive talent going into 2024. This season, though, they would actually play. Five of the 11 defensive starters in the NFC championship game are still on rookie contracts. That doesn’t include Dean, the Week 1 starter who is out for the season with a torn patellar tendon.

“We knew that we had to transition from an older defense and play younger guys,” Roseman said. “I think last year after the season, we’ve got to start playing younger guys. And that’s not on the coaches. That starts with me. I think whenever I look at our depth chart and I see maybe an unknown possibility versus a known possibility, I want to go with the known possibility. As kind of the cap gets tighter, as all our expensive players start becoming expensive, you have to go with young players.”

Roseman also navigated the retirements of Kelce and Fletcher Cox after the 2023 season, identifying their heirs apparent in Jurgens (Round 2, No. 51 overall in 2022 out of Nebraska) and Carter long before the Eagles legends ended their playing careers.

The general manager called it a “hard thing” to balance a long-term need with the understanding that those picks might not make an impact in the short term. Jurgens spent a year learning behind Kelce in 2022 before starting at right guard in 2023, then taking over at center this season. Carter played only 51% of the defensive snaps in his rookie year (one start), then saw a 33% increase in 2024 (15 starts).

Roseman emphasized that without adding those pieces when he did, the team would have been unlikely to have an opportunity to eventually compete for a championship.

“That’s when it makes the decision a little bit easier,” Roseman said, “if we’re really saying we’re doing this just to win championships.”

Roseman enjoys the fruits of his labor on Sundays. He celebrates on the sideline after wins with the players he brought to Philadelphia. But throughout the rest of the week, Roseman is thinking about how he can make the team better in the years to come.

On Thursday night after attending his son’s basketball game, Roseman was back in his home office perusing tape from Senior Bowl and East-West Shrine Game workouts in preparation for the draft. It’s all in an effort to ensure that the Eagles have another successful offseason, he said, even if free agency looks “different” with less cap space.

“That, for me, is the most important part,” Roseman said. “To be able to look in the mirror, wake up every morning, and know I’m giving everything I’ve got to this team, this organization, and our fans.”

» READ MORE: Eagles draft: Four players to target in the end of Round 1

Going into his 12th year as Eagles general manager, Roseman said that he won’t stop taking risks. That lack of risk aversion has nothing to do with his job security. The way Roseman puts it, if he starts worrying about doing what’s best for himself, he would lose focus on doing what’s best for the team.

“I’m not going to stop taking risks,” he said. “And if some point it gets me fired, I’d rather that than have any regrets. I don’t want to leave this job with regrets.”