Eagles Rookie Trade Attempt: How Philadelphia Traded Up for Jihaad Campbell in the 2025 NFL Draft

The Eagles rookie trade attempt during the 2025 NFL Draft was, on the surface, a modest one-spot move. Philadelphia held pick No. 32 — the final selection of the first round — and traded up a single position with the Kansas City Chiefs to land Alabama linebacker Jihaad Campbell at No. 31. The cost was their original first-round pick plus a fifth-round selection (No. 164). That much was reported widely. What received less attention was the fuller picture: Howie Roseman had actually tried to move considerably higher up the board before those attempts were rebuffed by four different teams, including the Green Bay Packers. The smaller trade with Kansas City was the fallback that still got the job done.

That distinction matters. It reframes what might look like a cautious, low-stakes maneuver as something more revealing — a front office with high conviction about a specific player, willing to pay a significant premium to jump the queue, ultimately forced to be patient by market resistance and then executing precisely when the window appeared. The Eagles had identified Campbell as a top-10 talent on their internal board and were determined not to let him slide to another team while they waited at pick No. 32.

For anyone trying to understand how the Eagles have built one of the NFL’s most consistent rosters over the past several years, this draft-night sequence is a useful case study. It shows the tension between aggression and discipline that defines the Roseman era — and it offers a close look at how a reigning Super Bowl champion approaches the annual challenge of getting better without giving up the assets that keep the whole operation running.

Background: The Eagles’ Draft Position and What Was at Stake

Entering the 2025 NFL Draft, the Philadelphia Eagles occupied a peculiar spot. As reigning Super Bowl champions, their first-round selection sat at No. 32 — the very last pick of the opening round, a position that guarantees a quality player is still available but strips you of the leverage most teams use to trade up. Every squad picking ahead of Philadelphia knew the Eagles had nowhere lower to go without completely exiting the first round. That structural disadvantage made Roseman’s aggressive trade pursuit all the more notable.

The Eagles had finished the 2024 regular season with an 11-6 record, won Super Bowl LIX, and done so with a defense ranked first in the league in its debut year under coordinator Vic Fangio. That unit was genuinely elite, but Fangio had made clear his preference for premium linebackers capable of both stopping the run and contributing in pass coverage — a skill set increasingly rare in the modern NFL. The Eagles had Zack Baun, whose transformation from edge rusher to All-Pro linebacker had just earned him a $51 million extension, and Nakobe Dean. But depth and versatility at the position remained a priority heading into the draft.

Campbell was the player the Eagles had circled. According to general manager Howie Roseman, speaking to reporters after the draft, Campbell ranked inside Philadelphia’s top 10 on their internal board — a significant elevation for a player most analysts had pegged somewhere between picks 12 and 21, depending on the evaluator. That gap between the Eagles’ private valuation and the public consensus is precisely the kind of inefficiency good front offices exploit, and it set the stage for a draft-night sequence that played out far more dramatically than the final one-spot move suggested.

Jihaad Campbell: The Player Philadelphia Wanted

Campbell grew up in Erial, New Jersey — Gloucester Township, roughly 17 miles from Lincoln Financial Field — making him, as Roseman pointed out, a homecoming pick in the most literal sense. He played his first three high school years at Timber Creek Regional before transferring to IMG Academy in Florida for his senior season, then chose Alabama over Clemson, Georgia, Florida, and Texas A&M. At 6 feet 3 inches and 244 pounds, with a 4.52-second 40-yard dash at the NFL Combine, he offered size and speed that most linebackers simply cannot match.

His 2024 season at Alabama was the performance that elevated his draft stock into the first round. He led the Crimson Tide with 117 tackles — the most by any Alabama player since DeMeco Ryans in 2003 — and recorded 11.5 tackles for loss, five sacks, two forced fumbles, and an interception. He earned First-Team All-SEC honours and was named a second-team All-American by the Football Writers Association of America. Entering the draft meant forgoing his final year of college eligibility, a decision that spoke to his confidence and the quality of professional interest he had attracted.

Beyond the statistics, Campbell offered something specifically useful for Vic Fangio’s defensive scheme. He had played both off-ball linebacker and edge rusher at Alabama, giving the Eagles flexibility to deploy him in multiple roles — lined up inside alongside Baun and Dean, or kicked out on the edge to add to a pass-rush group that already included Nolan Smith, Azeez Ojulari, and Josh Uche. Roseman addressed that versatility directly: “He can play inside, he can be an edge rusher — just really feel fortunate to bring him home back to Philly.”

Timeline: Key Milestones in the Eagles’ Rookie Trade Attempt

The Failed Trade-Up Attempts: What Happened Before Kansas City

The behind-the-scenes account of draft night — shared partly through a video posted on the Eagles’ official website and reported by Philadelphia Sports Network’s Anthony DiBona — paints a picture of sustained frustration before the eventual success. According to those reports, Roseman had targeted a significantly earlier pick, reportedly as high as No. 23, to ensure Campbell would be off the board well before any risk of another team selecting him. He approached the Green Bay Packers, who were picking in that range, along with three AFC franchises. All four declined to engage on terms that made sense for Philadelphia.

Why would teams turn down a team with the Eagles’ reputation for fair dealing? The likeliest answer is leverage. Teams holding picks in the mid-20s knew the Eagles had only one first-round selection, were already at the bottom of the round, and had a clearly identified target. That combination — high desperation signal, limited capital — weakened Roseman’s negotiating position considerably. Teams ahead of him could simply wait and see whether Campbell would fall, extracting a higher price if Philadelphia really wanted to jump. The Packers, in particular, had little incentive to help a team that had beaten them in the previous playoff cycle.

The resolution came when Campbell reached No. 31 still undrafted. The Kansas City Chiefs, who had just finished playing the Eagles in the Super Bowl, were willing to move one position for a fifth-round pick — a modest and reasonable price. Roseman’s patience had been tested, but the outcome vindicated the strategy: rather than overpaying to jump eight or nine spots, he waited until the market gave him a palatable deal. Campbell was his regardless, and the Eagles exited the first round with more remaining capital than a larger trade-up would have allowed.

Roseman’s Draft Philosophy and the Bigger Pattern

The 2025 eagles rookie trade attempt fits cleanly into a pattern that has defined Roseman’s tenure. According to a Yahoo Sports analysis published in March 2026, Roseman has traded up in four of the last five drafts: one spot for DeVonta Smith in 2021, two spots for Jordan Davis in 2022, one spot for Jalen Carter in 2023, and one spot for Jihaad Campbell in 2025. In 2024, he made a bolder jump — moving up 10 selections in the second round to land cornerback Cooper DeJean. That consistent willingness to spend capital to secure specific targets, rather than simply taking the best available player at a given pick, reflects a conviction-based drafting model. The Eagles don’t draft opportunity; they draft intention.

The broader draft operation in 2025 reinforced this. During the 2024 draft, the Eagles had tied an NFL record by making eight trades across seven rounds — a figure that speaks to how actively Roseman manages every pick as a tradeable asset rather than a fixed destination. In 2025, despite starting with only eight picks, the team left the draft with ten rookies, using trade-downs and pick swaps to maximise value on Days 2 and 3 after securing Campbell on Day 1. That combination — aggressive early, opportunistic late — has become the Eagles’ competitive signature.

Roseman also offered a telling comment about how the organisation views Campbell’s fit: “We look at the draft as a long-term opportunity for our team. We have a lot of confidence this guy is going to be here and play at a really high level for a long time.” That framing deliberately sidesteps short-term expectations and signals that the Eagles were buying a career, not just a rookie season. With five of their last six first-round picks coming from either Georgia or Alabama, and four of those on the defensive side, it also points to a persistent philosophy around recruiting from specific programmes with proven NFL pipelines.

“For us, this was an easy pick. Real explosive player. He can play inside, he can be an edge rusher — just really feel fortunate to bring him home back to Philly.”

— Howie Roseman, Eagles General Manager, 2025 NFL Draft Press Conference (via CBS News Philadelphia)

Where Things Stand Now

As of May 2026, Jihaad Campbell has completed his first NFL season with the Eagles. His specific rookie-season statistics have not been fully disclosed in the sources reviewed for this article, and independent verification of his 2025 game-by-game performance data is pending. What has been confirmed is that the Eagles’ defence remained competitive throughout the 2025 season, and the front office made further moves — including the in-season trade for Jaelan Phillips — that indicated continued faith in the defensive core Campbell was selected to strengthen.

The broader Eagles picture heading into the 2026 offseason is one of managed transition. Reports as of early 2026 indicate Roseman may be exploring trades involving wide receiver A.J. Brown, and the team is preparing for the 2026 NFL Draft with an eye toward sustaining the defensive excellence Fangio has built. Campbell, still only 21 years old and in the early stages of his professional development, is expected to be a long-term fixture in that defence rather than a short-term depth piece.

The Eagles rookie trade attempt itself has already entered Philadelphia front-office lore as another example of what makes Roseman effective: a willingness to push hard, absorb failure gracefully, and then execute cleanly when the right opportunity finally presents itself. The four rejected calls before the Chiefs deal went through were not evidence of poor planning — they were the cost of operating with genuine conviction in a market designed to punish desperation. That Roseman kept the final price down while still getting his man is precisely the outcome disciplined teams work toward.

Final Thoughts

What the Eagles rookie trade attempt ultimately reveals is not how boldly Philadelphia acts, but how clearly it thinks. The sequence — identify a specific player, push hard for the best possible price, absorb rejection without panic, and execute calmly when a viable deal appears — is a template for how well-run organisations operate when they have genuine conviction. Roseman didn’t overpay when four teams said no. He waited, and the market eventually gave him what he wanted at a price that didn’t compromise the offseason ahead.

Campbell himself is, at 21 years old, still in the early stages of becoming the player the Eagles believe he can be. The fact that he went 46 years without Philadelphia selecting an off-ball linebacker in the first round, and that the team still made this call despite a deep existing linebacker room, says everything about how highly they rate him. Vic Fangio has a track record of developing exactly this kind of versatile defensive piece, and the Eagles now have a local kid — one whose grandfather watched Randall Cunningham on these same sidelines — being developed by one of the best defensive minds in the sport.

Draft-night trades are often reduced to the transaction itself: who moved where, what was spent, who ended up where. The fuller story of Philadelphia’s 2025 first-round pick is richer than a single swap. It’s about the calls Roseman made before he got to Kansas City, the teams that gambled he was bluffing, and the front office discipline that turned four rejections into a measured, efficient acquisition. The Eagles got their man. The rest is just context.