This post was born from some mental exercises triggered last offseason as I watched the Chiefs and the Eagles take, at least on the surface, very different strategies to their roster construction coming off their Super Bowl matchup in Arizona. I had noticed the Eagles investing in running it back, reupping a number of their older veterans (James Bradberry, Fletcher Cox, Brandon Graham, and Jason Kelce among others), while the Chiefs were divesting themselves of Frank Clark, Carlos Dunlap, Ronald Jones, and Juju-Smith Schuster. I'd intended to track what each team did and write about how the two seemingly different strategies affected their seasons.

As we all know, the Chiefs ended up solidifying their dynasty with their back-to-back Super Bowl win, but did so after overcoming a distinct step backwards in their offense and making up for it with one of the best defenses we've seen in KC in decades. Meanwhile, the Eagles, struggling to gel with their new coordinators, fell off late in the year, finally limping out of the playoffs in a loss to an underwhelming Bucs team. I assumed in the moment that this was due to the Eagles ignoring the aging of their stars while the Chiefs tend to be very judicious over who they re-sign and who they let go (witness the Chris Jones/L'Jarius Sneed decisions this offseason). However, while the Eagles were older than the Chiefs, they were already older than the Chiefs in 2022, and they both got older by the same amount from 2022 to 2023. A deeper look would be required. So let's take a look at how Brett Veach and Howie Roseman differ in their approaches to team building.

The Draft

There’s not a lot of difference in the approaches that Veach and Roseman take when it comes to the draft.

Despite the jokes about Roseman’s fetish with Georgia that was primarily just backed up by one draft, the Chiefs and Eagles mined the SEC (and each of the other P5 conferences) at very similar rates, and they pull from Group of 5 conferences and below at similar rates as well.

When it comes to talent evaluation, while Veach is known for primarily selecting players with high Relative Athletic Scores (RAS), Roseman has similar tendencies. Veach has selected players with elite athletic traits (8 and above) 56% of the time. Roseman has used 60% of his picks on elite athletes. Veach has selected prospects with average traits (5.0 to 7.99) 25% of the time, while 22% of Roseman’s picks have come from that group. The differences show in Veach’s slightly stronger willingness to select players with mediocre RAS numbers, as Derrick Nnadi, Armani Watts, Nick Bolton, and Rashad Fenton all joined the Chiefs despite lower testing numbers, while Roseman has only picked one player with a RAS below 5. In contrast, the Eagles have selected players who haven’t tested enough to earn an RAS more often than the Chiefs (16% to 10%).

Across 2018-2023, the Chiefs and Eagles have drafted players who eventually became primary starters at about the same rate, though the pattern is very different. In 2018, Veach had a famously weak draft, producing only one eventual starter and only two players who are even still in the NFL, while Howie selected five eventual starters in that same draft. Things have changed since then, with Veach selecting eventual starters in every draft through 2022, many of them starting right away as rookies, while Roseman has found comparatively fewer starters in subsequent drafts, instead relying more on veterans to plug into starting roles. I should note that I only counted a player as being a primary starter if they started at least half the games in a given season, which means (for example) that Rashee Rice did not count for 2023 (though he should become another drafted starter assuming he plays enough games in 2024).

Across the years, KC and Philly have drafted similar numbers of eventual starters, similar numbers of players who’ve stuck around in the NFL, similar numbers of players who’ve played in at least one game for them, and similar numbers of players who’ve earned a second contract with the team. Where things differ significantly is in the number of draftees who’ve made it through to the end of their rookie contract. Over half of the players the Chiefs have drafted (not counting those still playing for them on their rookie contracts) have made it to the end of their rookie deals. For the Eagles, only slightly more than a third have done so. Howie gives up on or uses for trade bait his draftees far more quickly than Brett Veach does.

Talent Acquisition Outside the Draft

The number of veterans picked up during 2018-2023 aren’t all that different between the two teams (52-47 in favor of Philly), but the decisions they make regarding which veterans to pick up during free agency or via a trade, as well as for what reasons, play a major part in separating the two GMs.

Before we dive into the details, we need to cover a key concept, NFL aging curves. I’ve talked about this in the past, but the quick explanation is that the average football player enters the league at a certain level of performance. As the player spends his first few years in the league, he learns the nuances of his position and often physically matures as well, resulting in improved performance year over year. Eventually they reach a plateau that may last one or several years. At that point, the build up of injuries throughout their career and the physical skill atrophy we all experience as we age starts to catch up to them and their performance declines. The demands of different positions results in different aging curves for each position, and the data we have so far indicates the milestone seasons listed in the below table.

KC signed slightly more free agents than the Eagles did, counting only those who remained with the active roster once the season began. Of those, the same proportion were in that declining phase of their career.

So what was the difference? There were actually two major ones.

First, KC has never given up resources to trade for a declining veteran. The Eagles, who have traded much more than the Chiefs (18 player acquisitions compared to 8), traded for declining veterans more than any other aging curve sector.

Second, the Eagles targeted older veterans for starting positions (73% of their FA starters were in that category) while less than half of the veterans targeted by KC for starting positions were in that category. This speaks to a difference in philosophy between the two GMs. Veach values potential in younger players, picking up players who may improve over the next several seasons to slot into potential starting spots. The declining veterans he signs are primarily just used for depth. On the other hand, Roseman values existing demonstrated ability in veterans, instead gambling that their abilities and availabilities won’t deteriorate too quickly.

One place where Roseman gambles much more than Veach is in signing players who are extremely young for their position (for positions at QB or along the offensive line where it takes extra time to develop and few prospects come into the league ready to play at a high level right away). Roseman has signed players in that stage and has even traded for one. This also translates to handling UDFAs, which Roseman has signed significantly more than Veach, resulting in Eagles UDFAs contributing 17 AV in their first year compared to only 5 for the Chiefs. However, none of those Eagles UDFAs made it to receive a second contract, as Howie continued to churn the roster.

Average Age and Experience

All of that churning the Eagles do with their roster, trading away or cutting draft picks before they hit the end of their rookie contract and cycling through UDFAs, has allowed the Eagles to control their roster age despite maintaining a significant core of older, aging veterans. They have made some major corrections, as evidenced by a full year drop in average age between the 2019 roster and the 2021 roster, but by 2022, they almost gained a full year in average back thanks to a rush of older veteran signings. The average age went up further after the Super Bowl, as the Eagles re-signed many of their most aged veterans hoping to run it back but with a better final outcome.

In contrast, the approach the Chiefs have taken to move on from aging veterans (with notable exceptions for players like Travis Kelce and Chris Jones), acquiring young talent, and using older talent only to fill in gaps, has resulted in the team maintaining a remarkably consistent age profile. For the full six seasons examined, the highest and lowest average age has only covered a span of 0.5 years.

Ificouldbelikeveach suggested looking at snap-adjusted ages between the two teams, and it is here where the differences become more profound. Looking at 2023, the year after they went to the Super Bowl, Philadelphia's snap adjusted age was 26.8. The Chiefs' was 26.1. But wait, there's more! When you only count offensive and defensive snaps (since with few exceptions, special teams players are young, often rookies earning their stripes while they adjust to the NFL), the Eagles have a snap adjusted age of 27.2. The Chiefs? Still 26.1. An entire year's difference in average age is significant in a team sport where careers are typically short and the roster gets refreshed every year by rookies.

Salary Cap Management

The different philosophies on roster construction have resulted in widely different approaches to managing the salary cap. Signing and re-signing high caliber starter quality veterans comes with a price tag, and Howie has dealt with it by frequently wielding void years as a tool to stretch out the cap hit of his contracts. This strategy has allowed the team to stay within salary cap constraints year to year while maintaining its roster featuring a passel of aging starters. However, between the void years coming due and the price for their practice of dropping or trading away players before the end of their contracts (as noted above), the team has had a significant dead cap total. They have been top 10 in dead cap dollars across the years, including being in the top five in each of the past three years with a dead cap totaling over $60M each year. Combined with Howie Roseman’s tendency to keep a healthy rollover into the next year (top 10 in that as well), on average 28% of the team’s cap space was taken up for purposes not related to the players on the field that year.

In contrast, Brett Veach has been the model of fiscal restraint. The Chiefs have ranked 21st on average when it comes to dead cap across the years, and that is inflated somewhat by the dead cap in 2018 when Veach was busy cleaning up the philosophical switch from his predecessor John Dorsey, who ran things much more like Roseman does. Instead of prolific use of void years, Veach has used not-likely-to-be-earned bonuses to control when player payments hit the cap. The adjustments for these NLTBE incentives reduce the effective rollover of cap space from year to year without constraining the team’s cap flexibility in the current season. As a result, 88% of the team’s annual cap space is used on the field that season compared to 72% by the Eagles.

Overall

The approaches of both GMs have their merits, but ultimately, I think Veach’s strategy is more sustainable without accepting down years. This has been demonstrated by the streak of six straight AFC Championship Games the Chiefs so far in Brett Veach’s tenure. In contrast, Howie Roseman has shown an affinity for rapidly retooling his team, but that retooling has typically occurred after finding the current roster is untenable (sometimes accompanied by a coaching change as well). It is dependent on maintaining adequate talent evaluation, but Veach and his team have been quite successful with it.