Howie Roseman spoke following night one of the 2025 NFL Draft:

“We picked linebacker Jihaad Campbell. We made a small trade up just to ensure that we could get him. There were a lot of trades in the twenties, and so we just wanted to make sure that someone didn’t jump ahead of us. Excited to have him. Really excited to have him. Wasn’t really something we anticipated. Understand some of the other teams may have reasons for taking other players, but for us, this is a really easy pick. He’s a really explosive player. He can play inside. He can be an edge rusher. I just really feel fortunate to bring him home back to Philly.”

The Kansas City Chiefs took offensive tackle Josh Simmons out of Ohio State with the 32nd overall pick.

It was known that the Chiefs badly needed help on their offensive front, and they probably were not a threat to take Campbell ahead of the Eagles, but with other teams trying to get back into the first round, the Birds made the move from 32 to 31. Notably, Ian Rapoport mentioned that the Eagles had been trying to jump ahead as early as pick 22, which the Chargers used on a running back:

There were reports that you were trying to trade up a little bit earlier with that for LB Jihaad Campbell. (John McMullen)

Howie Roseman: It was. Again, this was a top-10 player on our board. We do not have any long-term concerns with his health. We look at the draft as a long-term opportunity for our team. We have a lot of confidence this guy’s going to be here and play at a really high level for a long time. When you’re in a draft and you’re picking at the end of the first round, you don’t have an opportunity to get a top-10 player on your board. A guy who can affect the quarterback, a guy who can affect the passing game. For us, it was a no brainer. Local kid, great character. So we were really excited to add him.

Did you think that he was falling or that this is where you felt— (Jeff McLane)

Howie Roseman: I think we get enough information before the draft that we started to feel like it was a possibility in the last few days. And so, we had gone through scenarios where he was going to fall. We knew that there was probably a sweet spot that we could try to get up at, and we had done a lot of planning about that, so we understood some of the questions that were going on on him. We spent a lot of time with our doctors and our medical staff ensuring that we were all seeing it the same way. Again, we have a lot of confidence in our edge rushers on this team and our inside linebackers on this team, but for us, this we thought was one of the best players in the draft.

Roseman told reporters that he has a lot of confidence in Nakobe Dean and that the Campbell selection shouldn’t be seen as any kind of referendum on the recovering linebacker. Howie says Campbell was “top-10 talent on our board” and that’s why they made the move. He was also asked if he felt like other GMs had a reluctance to trade with him based on all of the fleecing he’s done in recent years (paraphrasing, but it’s true) –

“I wasn’t feeling that way. Again, we’re all in the business of making our teams better. I think that when we find opportunities to make our team better, we’ll do the trade. When other teams find the opportunity to make their team better, they do the trade. I think we just traded with the team we played in the Super Bowl. We moved up one pick and gave them some value. So I think all the conversations we’re having– I think what happened in this draft was the trades started to pick up and the value of the trades started to pick up. So, that always makes it different. Once one trade goes down, the market kind of changes, so you got to adjust with that. But feel fortunate that we got him.”