When the Eagles were in the process of absolutely demolishing the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX, I had jokingly mentioned to my brother that Howie Roseman (the Eagles’ GM) should win Super Bowl MVP. As the game wore on, it felt less like a joke and more like reality. No individual Eagles player stood out from the rest, and there was a constant barrage of big plays from a seemingly endless number of players. Each time a different player made a significant play, I thought to myself, “How do they have so many impact players?!” Specifically on defense.
The answer to my rhetorical question is Howie Roseman, a wizard among men in the NFL business world. He assembled (and is continuing to assemble) an exceptionally deep and talented roster that was exponentially better than any other team out there. Sure, there are teams with superstar starters and decent benches, but this team is built differently. It was complete with few to no holes and endless depth.
Building A Roster With No Weak Spots
Take their D-line for example, Jalen Carter stands out as the stud of the group (the Eagles somehow getting a chance to draft him is a miracle all on its own), but then they also have fellow Georgia Bulldog Jordan Davis, who only stands at about 6’6”, 336 pounds. Coming off the bench for them in the Super Bowl was Milton Williams, who is now the third-highest-paid DT in the league after signing a mega-deal with the Patriots.
Then there is Moro Ojomo, a young DT from the University of Texas who hasn’t seen much playing time, but even in limited snaps, he managed to impact the game with a tackle for loss. You could go through each position and find the same type of talent and depth. Their cornerback room is maybe even deeper with Mitchell, DeJean, Slay, Maddox, Isaiah Rodgers, Ringo, and Ricks on their Super Bowl roster.
Madden Logic, Real NFL Results
The roster that Roseman has built is the type of roster that you are trying to develop in Madden. In a lot of ways, Roseman is actually managing the team like he is playing Madden franchise mode against a bunch of bots. He utilizes trades to an absurd degree (fleecing other teams so bad that other GMs have policy not to pick up the phone if Roseman calls on draft day), he drafts obvious studs that other teams are seemingly unable to identify or appreciate, he even utilizes the cap in a way that seems like he’s the only one in the league that is actually making strategic and logical decisions.
Let’s be clear, here. Roseman is not cheating or playing unfairly, the salary cap and the business rules are standard for all 32 NFL teams, and last I checked their isn’t a cheapskate owner like John Fisher (Athletics owner) or Bruce Sherman (Marlins owner) that isn’t willing to pay beyond the salary cap in order to win the Lombardi. Roseman just finds and exposes loopholes in the rules (loopholes that other teams also have access to, but fail to actually execute them) in order to gain an edge over the competition.
It’s like when you’re playing Madden and you find an easy way to acquire star players for cheap. Different Madden titles have had different quirks when it comes to the actual management of the franchise. Whether it’s sign and trade cheesing, exploiting flawed trade logic, pouncing on free agency glitches, or getting ridiculous hometown discounts on re-signing current players, it’s all about exploiting the failures of the system in which you’re in.
What’s different about Roseman is that he’s in a system that can see what he’s doing and can copy or put a stop to it. In Madden the CPU isn’t going to start exploiting its own bad logic. That doesn’t make any sense, even if the AI gets better in the game, but in real life, other teams can exploit the same loopholes as Roseman, but I guess it’s easier said than done, because they are terrible at it.
Void Years: The Cap Hack Only Roseman Understands
One of the best examples is void years. Void years are a contract exploit that adds an extra non-playing year (or more) to a contract to spread the total cap hit of the deal around more seasons, thus ensuring that you are paying less money per year, but also creating dead money when the player leaves the team.
Roseman has exploited the void years extremely well in his tenure as the Eagles’ GM, and this has led other teams to adopt the same tactic, except they aren’t as smart as Roseman. Teams like the Saints, Vikings, and Lions have created a salary cap hell for themselves by stacking as much dead money into the future as they can, currently the Saints are using 65 million dollars of their roughly 280 million dollar cap (about 23%) on players that aren’t on their team and are already looking at a 23 million dollar deficit for next season and they only have about 40 (53-man roster quality) guys signed for next year. The Vikings are in even worse shape with a projected deficit of 53 million already next year; they have even fewer roster-quality players than the Saints.
Unlike these teams that blindly follow the leader without any critical thinking or consideration of their budgets, Roseman looks wise beyond his years by making strategic and thoughtful moves. He’s been able to learn from past mistakes. After their Super Bowl defeat in SB47, he re-signed a bunch of players from that team, which hurt them the next season. He didn’t show that same sort of loyalty again by overhauling the secondary and multiple parts of the team to get them right back to the Super Bowl after one disappointing year.
It’s Time For Madden To Evolve
While I want to give Roseman all the credit in the world because I think he’s the best GM in the league by a long shot, I don’t want you to think that this article is just about glazing Roseman; it’s also about the symbiotic relationship between Roseman and Madden. If Roseman manages his team like a Madden franchise mode team, why doesn’t Madden franchise mode take a page out of Roseman’s book for once? The franchise mode offseason has been boring and borderline broken for years now, and I think it’s time we re-envisioned it in Madden 26 using Howie’s approach to managing.
I want void years, I want interpersonal relationship meters with all 31 other teams, I want the whole trade system to look like a dating sim, trying to woo another GM into a trade they otherwise might not make, and for consequences to occur for shafting another team (like a team not picking up the phone on draft day for instance). We need more intriguing mechanics that utilize and mirror the tactics of today’s NFL, and nobody is using those quite as effectively as Howie. Who knows, if EA builds a simulation like that, maybe other GMs can use it to practice, and maybe one day they can build a team that can actually compete against the Eagles without a generational star like Pat Mahomes.
