Bryce Johnston's job as the Eagles' Senior Vice President/Tertiary Football Executive is to be creative, to push boundaries, to solve problems in the present, and help position the roster for the future as it relates to the team's contracts and financial structure and, basically, do all of that within the confines of the NFL's salary-capped world.

"It is a job that requires having your mind live in the future most of the time, trying to think, 'OK, a year from now, two years from, three years from now, what would we have wished that we did now?" Johnston said. "This primarily revolves around pro transactions or contract strategies, but when we are having the NFL Draft, for example, I don't evaluate the players, but my role involves advising on how every decision we make impacts all of these other considerations going forward, all other things being equal.

"The goal is to be able to do whatever we want to do at any given time. I think there is a conventional wisdom that is more along the lines of an austerity mindset, that the role of the person in my job is to say, 'We can't do this. We can't do that.' Our goal is to make it so that if appealing opportunities arise, we can pursue them if it makes sense for us. There will always be limits, but the more intentional and proactive we can be, the more we can operate from a position of strength and take advantage of circumstances.

"If that was not the organizational mindset, my job would be much different and less interesting."

Johnston appreciates that this is the way the Eagles, under Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Lurie, approach every facet of the organization. The Eagles think outside the box, look for every competitive edge, and work collaboratively to compete for the Super Bowl on the field every single season. Johnston is in his ninth season, with responsibilities that include the planning and execution of salary cap and resource allocation strategy, player acquisition and contract negotiation/structuring, and other aspects of roster transactions and Collective Bargaining Agreement compliance.

In the always-fluid world of the NFL, Johnston has a lot to handle. He is the one who oversees "maintaining the financial statements of the roster," Johnston says, something that is constantly updated throughout a season and is used for scenario planning throughout the year, and he has recently taken on an increased role in working directly with player agents. He also manages external information, digging into the league's internal website to look at all of the previous day's contracts from around the NFL and from there updates and tracks all of that information to support future decision-making and strategy, as well as to look for tactics used by other teams that the Eagles can then incorporate into their own deals.

What Johnston is doing now is a job he envisioned as a high schooler in Medford, New Jersey all the way through his time at York College and then at Georgetown University Law Center. He created a website, EaglesCap.com, and when he moved on to the real world, he shut down the website and began contributing to OverTheCap.com in his free time. Johnston was at the time a corporate lawyer for a large firm in New York and the Eagles had an opening for a full-year Internship, so he ditched the law firm gig and accepted the Internship.

"I took the Internship understanding all the implications that you can imagine, but for me, it was a no-brainer," he said. "This is where I wanted to be, and I have been very fortunate to work with and learn from Jake (Rosenberg, former Vice President of Football Administration), Howie (Roseman, Executive Vice President/General Manager), and a lot of other great people over the years both still here and who have gone elsewhere."

It was an eye-opening introduction and continues to challenge creativity and innovation.

"The thing you realize very quickly is that what you see publicly is just the tip of the iceberg both in terms of the information that exists and the scope of what is actually happening behind the scenes," Johnston said. "We spend a lot of time on things that may not be apparent publicly, or that never actually happen, but that we evaluate carefully as we consider what the picture could look like in the future.

"I would describe my job as being heavily involved in every aspect of player personnel except for evaluating players. Everything related to our financial strategy and salary-cap management, roster transactions, trying to provide Howie with all the best information and advice to help support his decision-making. Avoiding evaluating players myself is an approach that I view as a feature, not a bug, of what I'm bringing to the table, because we have great people doing that, so I try to come at it from a different perspective of analyzing all of that information collectively without the extra first-person filter."

A highlight of the job for Johnston is when he and his team come up with a unique contract structure or iteration of an existing concept that is approved by the league, good for the team, good for the player, and a winner for the Eagles in both the present and the future. These types of situations often originate out of necessity to address a novel circumstance – rules changes at the end of a CBA, a significant decrease in the salary cap, etc. – and are then adopted as standard practice afterward.

The Eagles have assembled a winning roster – winning the NFC Championship for the second time in three seasons – and he looks at it in his unique way.

"One is that it is an accomplishment in some sense to be able to assemble this much contract dollar value at one time. The rules are set up to discourage this and make it difficult, but you can, so we're always working on enabling us to continue doing that," Johnston said. "And, yes, when I'm watching a game, I'm thinking about implications on contract-related considerations, all secondary to winning but still important for someone to be following closely.

"Our job is never finished. We're continually exploring new ways to do this, to build the roster, and improve it and to continue to give us flexibility because, again, the goal is to be able to add talent and improve our football team."