May 02, 2025
D. Ross Cameron/Imagn Images
Syracuse Orange QB Kyle McCord throws a pass against the California Golden Bears during the third quarter at California Memorial Stadium.
When the Eagles made the first of their three picks in the sixth round last Friday during the everlasting NFL Draft, they made a selection that was, for them, mildly unconventional.
Taking a quarterback with the 181st pick, Syracuse’s Kyle McCord, when they already had three on the roster, including a Super Bowl MVP, wasn’t the unconventional part.
For as long as Howie Roseman has called the shots for the franchise, throwing darts at Day 3 quarterbacks has practically been a bi-annual routine
What made the pick more atypical was McCord’s athleticism – ahem, of lack thereof – compared to other available quarterbacks, two of which were taken in the same round and within eight picks of when the Eagles submitted the card for McCord.
Roseman and his staff typically worship at the altars of measurables and athletic test scores, especially in later rounds.
McCord might’ve led the NCAA passing but his athletic testing ranked 15th among the 17 draft-eligible quarterbacks, and NFL personnel folks weren’t blown away by the Mount Laurel, N.J., native’s arm.
That the Eagles tabbed McCord ahead of Ohio State product Will Howard, another Delaware Valley native who led the Buckeyes to a national title, and Riley Leonard, a Notre Dame quarterback who lost to Howard’s Buckeyes in the BCS Championship, raised some eyebrows for those accustomed to Roseman gambling on Day 3 athletes who check all the athleticism boxes that tantalize the Eagles’ analytics-driven scouting staff.
Howard, a Downingtown native, measured at 6-foot-4, 236 pounds and ran a sub-5.0 in the 40 at his Pro Day. He ran for more than 1,000 yards and rushed for 26 touchdowns in his five-year college career that started at Kansas State.
Leonard ran for more than 2,000 yards in a four-year college career that began at Duke and logged an NCAA-most 17 rushing touchdowns in 2024 while also averaging more than 5 yards per carry.
McCord?
Well, consider that his 67 carries in 2024 were the most of his career in a season. And somehow, he managed to lose 65 yards on those carries.
You read that correctly.
McCord ran 67 times and managed to lose 65 yards, a comically terrible output that’s somewhat – somewhat – skewed by the 27 sacks he absorbed, but even still hard to reconcile.
Wait, it gets worse.
For his career, McCord has more negative yards (-141) than carries (111), making him an almost inconceivable outlier in the golden era of elusive quarterbacks who can also throw with accuracy and precision.
To be clear, Roseman has taken past shots on quarterbacks who weren’t exactly Olympic sprinters.
Undrafted free agent Carson Strong, he of the seriously bad knees but precision right arm, comes to mind, especially given that Roseman spent an unusually large sum of money in 2022 to land the Nevada product.
Tanner McKee, a 2023 sixth-rounder out of Stanford who’s a tick more athletic than a concrete statue, looks like a major hit as the third-year pro is poised to be Jalen Hurts’ backup this season.
But what Strong and McKee lacked in natural athleticism they compensated for with lethal right arms.
McCord’s arm is NFL-caliber, but nothing eye-popping.
Greg Cosell, one of the country’s top draft analysts, observed McCord’s habit of lifting his back foot off the ground on his delivery, a mechanical flaw that can reduce throw torque.
“In some ways I thought, can he be Kirk Cousins with the Vikings?… Can he be Brock Purdy in a Kyle Shanahan type of offense?”@GregCosell with some interesting potential comparisons for Eagles QB Kyle McCord:
— Inside The Birds (@InsideBirds) May 1, 2025
Presented by @DrinkGarageBeer pic.twitter.com/zTAFDGOJ4k
So, why would Roseman choose McCord over his more athletic counterparts?
It could be another recent example of zigging while the rest of the NFL zags, like signing a free-agent running back to a mega-deal, or suddenly investing buku bucks and first-round draft stock in off-ball linebackers.
Roseman is big on getting ahead of league trends.
The NFL has gone so gaga over quarterbacks who can move the chains with their legs that it’s practically stiff-armed the conventional pocket passer who was once a staple at the sport’s most important position and the centerpiece of the top offenses.
There’s still a place in the NFL for quarterbacks who can win from the pocket. In fact, the Eagles’ Super Bowl run was nearly short-circuited in the divisional round by the purest of pocket passers, but Matthew Stafford fell 13 yards short of pulling off the upset on a snowy afternoon at the Linc.
“That’s why Howie Roseman is the best,” said Syracuse offensive coordinator Jeff Nixon, who welcomed McCord’s transfer from Ohio State and built the
NCAA’s top passing offense around his quarterback’s fearless trigger arm. “To get a player of Kyle McCord’s caliber in the sixth round, a guy who led the country in passing … The guy has only lost four games in two years as a starter in major college football, which is a really, really good record.”
McCord’s ability to process information, read through progressions and throw with precision is the reason the Orange – not typically a pass-first team – felt comfortable letting McCord throw 45 times per game, most in college football, despite the fact that its offensive coordinator is a former running back and its head coach specialized on the defensive side.
You need to be some kind of wonderful to convince a defensive-minded head coach that it’s OK to routinely pass the ball 45 times a game.
“Philly is really going to like him, because we were also really a big RPO team,” added Nixon, who spent time on the Eagles’ staff from 2007-2010 under Andy Reid. “But that requires you have a quarterback that makes really good decisions whether to hand it off or to throw it.
“A quarterback like Kyle, who has a gunslinger mentality, a lot of times he’s gonna throw it. But he’s such a great decision-maker we had no problem throwing the ball 45 times per game. We knew he was going to get completions.”
Nixon noted that most prolific passing teams don’t control the ball the way Syracuse did, ranking fifth in time of possession. That means McCord specialized in converting third downs and keeping the offense on the field.
“That just shows you Kyle’s ability to take what the defense gives you,” Nixon said.
Roseman started to show interest in McCord a few weeks before the draft. He and Nixon are close going back to Nixon’s time in Philadelphia on Reid’s coaching staff while Roseman was climbing the personnel ladder.
The Eagles were also taking long looks at Syracuse tight end Oronde Gadsden, who was drafted by the Chargers in the fifth round, but Roseman kept showing interest in McCord. Nixon sees a potential Kirk Cousins-type story in McCord.
“It wasn’t a surprise to see that when they got an opportunity to see a player of his caliber in the sixth round to just take him,” Nixon added. “He’s an NFL quarterback. It’s great that Howie got a chance to take him in the sixth round. He’s gonna make the best of it.”
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