Earlier Thursday, the Eagles announced several additions to and promotions within the personnel department. Following the conclusion of the day's Organized Team Activity, general manager Howie Roseman explained some of the new hires, beginning with the import Tom Donahoe, the former Buffalo Bills general manager and team president and director of football operations for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
He brings "a lot of experience, valuable experience," said Roseman. "He's been with winning organizations. He's someone who can add a lot of insight. We felt like Phil (Savage) filled that role, and (Donahoe) is kind of replacing that person who's been in a general manager position. He's been the president of a team, he's won Super Bowls, so we're excited to add him."
Since parting ways with the Bills following the 2005 season, Donohoe has remained tuned in to the game, something that was of particular importance to Roseman.
"He's worked with ESPN, he's continued to evaluate players, he sent us his evaluations of the guys in this draft," said Roseman. "He really wanted to get back into it. We'd been talking even before we had some of these guys change and we thought it was a good fit, right time.
"That was the encouraging thing with Tom. Tom had done a lot of the evaluations; he had done every draft since he's been out. He did 200 players in this draft. He really wanted to be part of a team environment. We'd been talking for a few months and when Phil left, it was kind of the perfect addition for us."
Savage, who departed to take over as head of the Senior Bowl, did a lot of work on the SEC when he was with the Eagles. That area of expertise will be partially filled by Ed Marynowitz, the new assistant director of pro scouting who comes to the Eagles after serving four years as the director of player personnel for Alabama.
"I think it was natural for Phil to do the SEC schools," said Roseman. "We added a guy who was the director of player personnel for Alabama who we're really excited about. He's a guy who recruited a lot of the guys in the SEC. Obviously he knows the SEC really well and for some reason that seems to be a little focus area for us, so we're excited about adding Ed as well."
Roseman added that the team won't be filling the exact director of player personnel position vacated by Ryan Grigson's departure to become the general manager of the Indianapolis Colts. Louis Riddick remains the director of pro personnel while Anthony Patch remains the director of college scouting after his recent promotion.
"We're going to go with the people we have," said Roseman. "Through this process, when Ryan (Grigson) left, we kind of went with the people we had here and we added some people that we feel really good about and we like the dynamic as it's currently set and we're going to go with it.
"I think what we added was a nice combination of experience, we have a lot of young guys who we're really excited about, smart guys, hard-working guys. We're really encouraged by what happened here in this offseason and the dynamic that we set up and hopefully we take that, add the guys and move forward."
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