Here’s a draft nugget from Albert Breer via Sports Illustrated:

The Eagles were prepared to take Christian McCaffrey with the 14th pick (the pick they got from the Vikings for Sam Bradford), had the ex–Stanford star fallen to them. McCaffrey didn’t, and Philadelphia wound up with Tennessee pass rusher Derek Barnett instead. The Eagles won the Super Bowl nine months later, Barnett was just O.K., and McCaffrey became, and remains, a big star in the pros.

That would’ve been the first running back taken by the Eagles in the first round since 1986. I love these confirmed reports five years after the draft. You know who else the Eagles were ready to take if they fell to them at #14 that year? Myles Garrett, Marshon Lattimore, Jamal Adams, and Haason Reddick. We don’t even know if this is true. We don’t know if this is Howie Roseman talking to Breer or a custodian who was cleaning the NovaCare war room and saw McCaffrey’s name highlighted on some paper.

Obviously Breer wrote this to fan the flames of the masses calling for Bijan Robinson at #10. No better tactic to get some eyeballs on your article than confirming a report about another pass-catching every down back from a prior draft the Birds were high on. I’m sure the phone lines at WIP lit up like Bam Margera blowing into a breathalyzer once this news came out. WIP is on it’s 12 Days of Bijan Robinson. Three French Hens, two turtledoves, and dreams of Bijan in the endzone for a pair of TDs. We were talking about our Top-10 Kings of Philly Sports on Crossing Broadcast today and you could make a case he should be on it with the amount of programming 94.1 has dedicated to him over the last couple of weeks.

I honestly have no opinion on Robinson one way or the other. Does he make the Eagles three points better than the Chiefs in the Super Bowl? Probably. Is he a long term risk? Of course. That’s the way you have to look at the RB position nowadays. If the Birds draft him I’ll drive the bus like I will with any first round pick the Eagles make (except Marcus Smith). In Howie I Trust!

Actually now that I think about it I definitely wanted Jonathan Allen in 2017. Maybe I do know more than Howie.

 

UPDATE: It looks like Jeff McLane reported this back in April of 2018 a week before the NFL Draft:

Regrets, the Eagles had few last season. But if there was one, it was not drafting an elite running back.

The class was deep, they had a need, and they had more than enough picks. But when the three-day extravaganza was over the Eagles had procured only running back Donnel Pumphrey in the fourth round.

“When we got together after the draft last year, the running back class that we thought was really strong going in, we thought that maybe there would be an opportunity that we’d get one of those running backs,” Eagles executive Howie Roseman said Thursday. “Maybe a different guy than Pumph.”

In a rare moment of transparency, Roseman simply stated the obvious. While Pumphrey was selected after impact tailbacks such as Christian McCaffrey (first round), Dalvin Cook (second), and Alvin Kamara and Kareem Hunt (third), the Eagles had hoped one would fall to them in each of those rounds.