Sure, they’ve won a Super Bowl and are usually in the playoff hunt, but there’s one regrettable move the Philadelphia Eagles failed to make that could’ve made them even better: drafting quarterback Russell Wilson.
Prior to the 2012 Draft, then-Eagles head coachAndy Reid said Wilson had potential to be great and wanted to take him in the third round. Unfortunately for them, he had already been chosen.
The Seahawks, of course, took him in the third round before Philly’s pick. That led to the team taking Nick Foles, who went on to lead the team to a Super Bowl victory.
The Eagles settled for Fletcher Cox in the first round, Mychal Kendricks and Vinny Curry with their two picks in the second round, and then Foles.
“[Wilson] is a player we didn’t get, and I’ll always regret it,” Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said. “It was someone I really wish we had drafted in the second round and didn’t wait. But we really didn’t think that anyone would jump us and take Russell, so that was that.”
“It’s very, very difficult to project what you call franchise or what we might call franchise quarterback,” he added. “It happens. It just happens. After year one or year two, is Josh Allen a franchise quarterback? Was he even thought to be a franchise quarterback when Buffalo drafted him? I think the answers are clearly no, no, and no. He developed into one. We all have this vision, myself included, of an automatic franchise quarterback. It’s almost nonexistent and when it does exist, you’re very, very lucky to have that.”
It’s hard to regret drafting a quarterback who stepped in for the injured starter, pulled off one of the greatest playoff runs in sports history, and led your team to its only Super Bowl win, but here we are.
