PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — General manager Howie Roseman expressed the feelings of many Eagles fans when asked to assess the team's 2020 season.
"This has been a disappointing, embarrassing, frustrating season," he said.
Those were the words of Roseman as he opened his joint season-ending news conference with Doug Pederson on Monday.
It was one day after the Eagles' season ending loss to Washington, which dropped them to 4-11-1 on the season.
It was a season filled with disappointment, as well as controversy, at the quarterback position. Now, the Eagles must look ahead and find a way to clean up the mess that was made this season.
Roseman was more than willing to accept his responsibility for what went wrong.
"When you win four games that's on all of us," said Roseman. "That's on me. We have really good people here. We have to figure out how to fix this and get this back on the right path."
Getting back on the right path won't be easy.
The Eagles have a lot of money tied up in some of their older players along with a quarterback who has reportedly requested to be traded.
Roseman admitted he was hoping to duplicate the Super Bowl success from three years ago over the past few seasons and understands he may have waited too long to make the changes which seem to be on the horizon this offseason.
"I think that's my responsibility that I didn't really listen to that as much as possible," Roseman said. "Now, we're in the situation we are in now where change is necessary and change is inevitable to this roster and the things that we need to do to get back being the kind of team that we know we can be."
As for Wentz, Roseman would not reveal if he has spoken to the people representing the quarterback, but said he has no plans to trade Wentz at this time. When players held their Zoom media sessions after Roseman and Pederson, Wentz chose not to speak with reporters.
It may be an ominous sign given the fact that Wentz had the chance to deny reports of a trade request if they were not true.
Roseman insists Wentz is still part of the grand plan for the team going forward. The same sentiments were echoed by Pederson.
"The relationship is good," said Pederson. "It's fine. It's something that we're going to continue to build upon, and listen, I know Carson's disappointed. It's not the season that he had anticipated, it's not the season I had anticipated as the head coach. There were a lot of moving parts."
As the Eagles begin their assessment of their offseason plans, many football fans are still talking about the ending of Sunday night's season finale.
Pederson is facing plenty of criticism for putting in little-used Nate Sudfeld at quarterback in the final quarter of a three-point game. Sudfeld struggled and the result was a Washington victory coupled with a host of angry New Yorkers who saw the Giants get eliminated.
Pederson still insists he was coaching to win by going with Sudfeld.
"We were struggling just a little bit to move the ball," Pederson said. "Defensively, they kept us in the game with a couple of takeaways late, and my plan was to get Nate in the game. Nate's a guy that's very capable of running our system and executing, and had an opportunity to pull that game out."
In the end, it ended as another loss.
The Eagles now enter a critical offseason which could shape the direction of the franchise for many years to come.
"I can't tell you there's any situation where we felt like we would be where we are today sitting here," said Roseman. "We have to come back and look at it with fresh eyes. We are going to spend the week evaluating our players, with our coaches, with our personnel staff, with our front office. We do that in every level, like we talk to the trainer about how they are interacting, our strength coaches, our performance coaches, our PR, security, everywhere, and we just have to do a deep dive on every position."
