Eagles Deep Personnel Bench Should Help Overcome Loss Of Top Scout

Success comes at a price.

In the NFL, that cost is attrition, which comes in three phases: coaches, followed by on-field talent, and finally, personnel staff.

The last of the trilogy comes with a different calendar, draft to draft instead of season to season.

The Super Bowl LIX champion Philadelphia Eagles are lamenting the loss of Senior Director of College Scouting Anthony Patch, who spent most of the past 23 years with the organization, rising from college scouting coordinator in 2002 to running Philadelphia's college scouting department for much of the past decade.

Patch is leaving for a senior personnel job with the Las Vegas Raiders to work with an old colleague with the Eagles, new Raiders GM John Spytek.

The two worked together in Philadelphia from 2005 to 2009, when the latter started as an intern and college scouting assistant before becoming a college and pro scout with the Eagles from 2007-09.

Patch's return to the organization after a brief exile when Chip Kelly was handed control and tabbed Ed Marynowitz to briefly run the personnel side coincided with the modern run of two Super Bowl championships in eight years, and the recent run of exceptional draft results.

Since 2016, when Patch took over as the Eagles' senior director of college scouting, he's been at the side of well-regarded GM Howie Roseman during the draft each year.

An NFL source noted that the Eagles would have liked to keep Patch but understood the need for what was the longest-tenured member of the organization on the scouting side to leave for what is a promotion with more money that will get him closer to his Washington home.

The Eagles have suffered significant attrition on the personnel side in recent years, with executives like Joe Douglas and Andrew Berry leaving for GM jobs, and others like Brandon Brown, Ian Cunningham, and Cat Hickman-Raiche leaving for promotions that clear the path to potential GM jobs down the road.

The loss of Jake Rosenberg from the football operations side, the team's former vice president of football administration, should also be noted.

After Brown left for the New York Giants and Cunningham departed for Chicago for assistant GM roles, Roseman remade his personnel department by giving out the assistant GM title to two executives: Alec Halaby and Jon Ferrari.

The Eagles' GM also brought in current Vice President of Player Personnel Chuck Walls, and Senior Director of Scouting Brandon Hunt from outside the organization while elevating Alan Wolking twice.

Roseman has set up a system with dual-VPs of player personnel where one comes from the pro side (Walls), and the other with college expertise (Wolking) intermix.

Roseman also has two veteran personnel men -- former Jacksonville GM Dave Caldwell and ex-Denver VP of Player Personnel Matt Russell -- as consiglieres.

The team recently showed clips of its annual pre-Day 3 draft "passion meeting," highlighting the vast array of talent Roseman has assembled on the scouting side.

Walls and Assistant Director of College Scouting Ryan Myers were pounding the table for fourth-round defensive tackle Ty Robinson of Nebraska.

Southeast Area Scout Lee DiValerio was lobbying for Georgia linebacker Smael Mondon, Russell advocated for fifth-round center Drew Kendall of Boston College, and Director of Player Personnel Phil Bhaya spoke highly of fifth-round Michigan tackle Myles Hinton.

Caldwell and Senior Qualitative Analyst Zach Drapkin spoke highly of sixth-round Syracuse quarterback Kyle McCord.

The logical in-house replacement for Patch would be his top assistant Myers.

The presence of Halaby, who has had GM interviews over the past two cycles, Caldwell, Russell, Walls, Wolking, and Hunt on the scouting side is the kind of bench that can persevere even with the loss of demonstrated performance by Patch.

However, Roseman's atypical job security demands the deep bench stays populated because ambition will continue to fuel his lieutenants to look outside the building to take the next step in their respective careers.

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