2020 NFL Draft: Five first-round targets for the Philadelphia Eagles

The Philadelphia Eagles will be drafting 21st in the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft. Here are five prospects the team should target.

The 2019 season was disappointing for the Philadelphia Eagles. The team came into the season looking like strong contenders for a spot in the NFC Championship Game. The 2019 team included Super Bowl veterans, elite offensive and defensive lines, a healthy quarterback in Carson Wentz and a coaching staff that had led the team on two back-to-back improbable playoff runs.

Led by a Super Bowl-winning head coach in Doug Pederson and supplied talent by general manager Howie Roseman, this team appeared to have the elite starters and quality depth players it needed to be a serious contender in the NFC.

But the NFL is never consistent year to year and just when you think you know who the contenders are, the league throws a wrench into your predictions. Who would have thought in December that the New Orlean Saints and the New England Patriots would be sitting at home in the divisional round, while the Tennessee Titans and the San Francisco 49’ers would be playing in their respective conference championships?

One of the biggest issues the Philadelphia Eagles faced this past season was a regression of talent from several players on the Super Bowl-winning team. Besides injuries, regression defined the 2019 season for the Eagles, as players such as Nelson Agholor dropped game-defining passes.

The Eagles secondary allowed flawed teams like the Detroit Lions and the Miami Dolphins to run up the score and unreliable receivers made it difficult for the offense to execute the unique plays coach Pederson’s offense requires.

By the end of the season, practice squad players ran a watered-down version of the Pederson offense, and the Eagles narrowly won the NFC East with a 9-7 record. Meanwhile, every other divisional winner in the NFC went 13-3 in 2019.

The Eagles NFC East crown is more of an indictment of the rest of the division and not a sign of a healthy roster. With every other divisional rival introducing new head coaches in the past two weeks, the Eagles will have to fix their personnel issues quickly if they hope to be competitive in 2020.

According to Over The Cap, the Philadelphia Eagles will have ten draft picks in the 2020 NFL Draft when estimating compensatory picks. The Eagles will have plenty of opportunities to improve the roster heading into next season.

But with twenty-one free agents heading into the off-season (according to Spotrac), the Eagles will have very little room for error. No other draft pick will be more important for this team than the first-round selection.

The first-round pick is statistically the least likely to end up a bust. The team’s hopes and dreams for a season are typically placed on the shoulders of these young athletes. And nothing defines a general manager’s tenure more so than how well they draft in the first round.

With two seasons of questionable draft selections and free-agency pickups on general manager Roseman’s resume, the first-round selection in the upcoming draft has the potential to make or break Roseman’s career in Philadelphia.

In this article, we will explore five prospects the Philadelphia Eagles should be looking at in the 2020 NFL Draft. We’ll explore certain issues such as positional value, Eagles draft tendencies and roster needs when reviewing these prospects.

In the 2020 NFL Draft, there is a wealth of talent in the first round. But these five college athletes make the most sense for the Eagles roster heading into 2020 and beyond. Click the button below to see the top five prospects the Philadelphia Eagles should target in the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft.