NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal - Power Players: Eagles Assistant GM Adam Berry

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

Jourdan Rodrigue is joined by Eagles assistant general manager Adam Berry to discuss how he was recruited by Eagles general manager Howie Roseman and left a career at Goldman Sachs to work with the Eagles, what it's like working for an organization that shows "no fear in decision making", what goes into finding and developing players from wide array of backgrounds, the process of building high functioning teams and more! NFL Daily YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/nflpodcastsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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The entire draft room groans, because you just took the guy they wanted. There's no better feeling than crushing your fantasy football league. I'm JJ Zachary Eisen, host of the award-winning late-round podcast. Before your draft, our players to target and players to avoid episodes tell you exactly who to circle and who to cross off. Listen to the late-round fantasy football podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Whether you're a seasoned NFL fan or new to the game,

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smart people inside the sport about how they do football and peel back the curtain a little further for our listeners. I'm Jordan Rodriguez. Today, I am thrilled to welcome Adam Berry, the assistant general manager of the Philadelphia Eagles. Adam has a really unique background. He played football in college at Princeton. He was a receiver, went into finance after he graduated and ultimately spent 14 years at Goldman Sachs as a managing director. We will talk to him about what that actually means because I personally did not know. Eagles general manager, Howie Roseman, has a knack for hiring smart people first and then getting all the football stuff figured out later. And so he heard Adam speak to a group and decided he wanted to hire him as the Eagles director of football operations

and strategy in 2023. Now, Adam is the assistant general manager and the Eagles are once again retooling many of their football processes and trying to find competitive edges, as they always do. this is a front office that leads the league in many areas, including thinking differently. And I am so excited to get into that with Adam today. Let's get started. Adam, I am so grateful that you could join me today for this episode of NFL Daily's power players. You have so much in your background and in your current role that I want to get into.

But first and foremost, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for having me, Jordan. It's exciting to participate in this and to talk shop a little bit. So I'm excited to be on and thanks for having me. One thing we really love is process here. This is what this show is all about. I know you're such a process geek too. So this was one that I was really looking forward to for a long time.

And I'm going to make you talk about yourself too, which I know you're not hugely a fan of. But let's start with your background. It's super unique. Can you, I don't even know how to do my taxes fully. So can you explain to me what your job was before you started working for the Eagles? and what that means in the landscape of the financial world. Well, you know, you're not alone because I think my wife always told me when I worked at Goldman Sachs that she could not explain what I was doing either. And by the time I was just about to leave, she had it gone down to a sentence and then, you know, no longer that was my job.

But, you know, I worked at Goldman Sachs for 14 years. My last job was head of the U.S. loan trading business within corporate credit. And what that means is for all the corporations out there that borrow money and need to be loaned money that are U.S. domiciled, my business was responsible for buy and selling, trading their debt. And so as part of that business, you have the opportunity to buy loans that you think are undervalued or short loans that are, you think are overvalued on behalf of the firm. But there's also a customer-facing side of the business as well, too. So, you know, for many of your listeners, they have 401Ks or pension plans with their employers. A lot of those people were helping them invest money as well, too, as well as hedge funds and mutual funds as well, too.

And so you're managing a trading desk, a sales force, an operations team. It was very different than what I was doing in terms of functionally versus what I'm doing with the Eagles right now. Yeah, but it's so interesting because I feel like because you played football and you were involved in football, football is in your life and your family and in all corners, I'm thinking there had to be some way that football was sort of leaking into your day to day. At the very least, the competitive aspect of it, because it sounds very calm the way you're speaking about it right now. But man, I've seen the movies, right? It is not a calm profession.

No, the movies get at least some of it right. The trading floor is not exactly the most, you know, calm profession, as you put it. What many people don't know is that a lot of traders are former collegiate athletes across a whole range of different sports. And I think what I found in going into trading was, you know, a lot of us have aspirations of being able to play football professionally or play a sport professionally, but I certainly wasn't good enough to do that. And so you look for something that kind of fuels your competitive drive and, you know, what you grew up with doing as an athlete.

And trading comes really close to that because it's a high pressure environment. It's certainly not necessarily always the, it's a little bit, it can be a rough environment where people are going to tell you exactly what they think or what you need to do. You have a, you know, a quote unquote scoreboard every day in terms of your profit and loss. And it's just really highly competitive because you're going against other institutions and banks that are, you know, competing for customer business, competing to get an edge, doing all these different things. And so it really does kind of quench your kind of competitive fire, like, as a former athlete, that goes into it as well, too.

So there are certainly similarities, as you point out, which we can delve into more as we continue. Yeah, for sure. And I'm curious, because I've always wanted to hear you tell this story, is how we, your sort of world's crossover, and you're just there, and you're just in the moment, you're thinking, okay, I'm presenting, I'm giving a talk at this. I think it was a seminar or a consultation.

And you have no idea in the moment that this NFL, GM at the top of his game is listening to you and is like, I think I should hire that guy. Can you take me through how you guys met and kind of what that process was? Sure, sure. It certainly is a unique story. It's kind of a, it's always a reminder you don't know, you know, where your next opportunity will necessarily come from. But, you know, as part of being a business head, in our business, we had a, what I call

like a client conference where we brought in a lot of our corporate and institutional clients to a place on the West Coast where we hosted them for multiple days. And as part of that conference where we're giving content, we usually tried to bring in a speaker who had a non-finance background to talk about what they do and to make some comparisons to the business role to see if there's something that we could learn. And so that year, we invited Howie Roseman. And as somebody who was senior within the firm at that point,

I got asked to be part of the keynote presentation and work on that with Howie and to present with him. And so we got to work together over the course of a few days. We presented together. It was received positively. And it was sometime after that, how he reached out to me and said, hey, would you consider pivoting from business to sports? And, you know, Howie is very charismatic, right?

So I'm thinking that, you know, he's just joking. And this is just a polite way of him, you know, saying, hey, you know, I appreciate working with you and, you know, making me feel good. I was like, oh, it was really nice thing to say. So I don't think it's actually like a serious job opportunity. And so he eventually reaches out to, I guess he must have reached out to my brother just to be like, hey, you know, just so you know, I wanted to talk to your brother about this. And it was like, hey, how he said he came to you about a potential opportunity. And I was immediately embarrassed because I was like, I didn't know that he was being serious about it.

This is someone who was, you know, as a Hall of Fame general manager, you know, off of this exposure. thinking that, you know, someone who'd been a career, you know, been in finance for that long, that would be something that he would think to do. And when it came down to it and talking to Howie, and he's, you know, talking about his vision for, for the role, for me, for how I could help the organization, the things that, you know, how, how unique it would be to work in football. And he's an elite recruiter among other things. You know, where I came down on it was here was a really rare opportunity to do something that was an incredible life experience, really special, to learn from somebody who was literally at the top of his game

for an organization that's very forward thinking, and that if I said no to something like this, these opportunities don't come around, but literally once in a lifetime. And the business world was and is always going to be there, but the opportunity to work in professional football for such a best-in-class organization was not. And so, you know, we,

myself and my family, we decided that this is the move that we wanted to do and haven't looked back and it's been fantastic. So I love this story for many reasons. First of all, because to me, it gets to the heart of something that we're going to talk about more later in the show, which is where don't the Eagles look when they're team building, right? But also, it's an organization that is so paralleled in some ways with being an apex competitive environment internally and also across the league. And so you were used to that. And obviously, you had football in your background and you had played at a high level in college. But at the same time, jumping into a strategy role, a director of operations role, a role where he's basically

telling you, here's a blank sketchbook, create, what was that like for you? And digging into it for real and thinking, oh, I'm really going to make, carve something out in this space. You know, I would say the learning curve was steep, right? Because you're learning, you know, just a new industry, right? A new industry. You're learning at times new jargon, a new language. There's a lot that you're, that you're learning. But as you, as you noted, there were certain qualities and skills that I was able to bring from my previous experience that were much more translatable than I may be anticipated that they would be when originally I was going to make the transition.

But there are certainly times where you're being pushed out of your comfort zone. But I think every experience for growth and every experience that, you know, people who have had a lot of success in this industry as well as other industries are they're willing to go outside of their comfort zone. And what I really appreciate is that, you know, Howie is somebody who also had a unique background before he became the general manager of the Eagles. And so he had a very clear view and vision of what I needed to do in order to get to where I needed to be. And so part of that is because he was able, he had lived that previously in his experience. And so immediately he had me

in all different facets of the football operation. He made sure that I was evaluated, writing the entire draft board, that I was going on college visits, that I was covering pro teams that I was doing a lot of the, a lot of work within free agency and that evaluation process as well, too. And when Howie couldn't be there to be the person who was talking to me at any given moment, he was very thoughtful about who I was working with within the organization. He's hired really well, like on our staff. We've had a lot of people who have gone through Philly and then have the opportunity to do some really amazing things outside of Philly.

And so if I'm not working on personnel stuff with Howie, I get a chance to in the cap and contract space when I first started work with Bryce Johnston, right? And think about how we think about our strategic planning and the cap and our resource usage. I get to work with Alec Hallaby and talk about, you know, the intersection about data and personnel and, you know, his wealth of experience in all these different silos. And even right now, I have an office that is right next to Joe Douglas, who I can, is just a wealth of wisdom and information. And all of that was really intentional about Howie, because You know, he put a lot of time and effort into my development individually, but he also made sure that I got exposures to all these other people he had brought in and had trained and were performing at a high level so that I could learn from them too.

Thank you for taking us through the various intro departments, too, because what I think people don't necessarily always know from the outside looking in is how much information you're uploading in a building like that at any given moment. And you're the assistant GM now, right? and you're looking back maybe in this conversation on those days of you are participating in every element of a football calendar and internally what that process looks like. When you look back at those days and the vast quantities of, I just call it data, whether it's observational or actual data that you're just absorbing, what do you remember about that time? And did you just sort of say like, F it, I'm just going to throw myself into this.

like full full speed and see what happens? Well, I think that was something that my trading experience prior had prepared me for because when you are, you know, trading a book of whatever asset class, you're constantly just being inundated with information by the second. And your decision making is happening by the second. There could be news that happens overnight to, for something that you would think is totally unrelated to a company who's debt you're trading, but could really, influence the valuation, the pricing, the way some of your customers react.

And so I was fortunately in an environment where you're getting a lot thrown at you all the time. And so pivoting to an environment where I knew that would happen and that I would have to get up to speed quickly in order to produce in the way that was, if the organization required me, was something that I found incredibly helpful during the time. But there are certainly, like with anyone doing a new thing or a new career or stepping outside of their comfort zone, there are moments where you're like, oh man, can I, can I process all this? But you have to jump into it. You know, you have to immerse yourself. You have to

really work and spend the time to make sure that not only do you understand the different components tactically, but you understand strategically how they all fit together as well too, right? That's what can be really valuable. And that was a challenge that not only was exciting for me, I felt like I was in an environment where it really encouraged me to do that. One thing, too, that I love about being in buildings like that is that feeling where almost like you surface and there's a lot happening all the time. But every once in a while, you surface and you look around and you think, I am with some of the best people in the world right now and everyone cares just as much as I care, the

emotional side of it. And really, like, living and dying, honestly, I know you have to stay. neutral, but like living and dying with this team as well and what and the players and just how much everyone gives to it. Was that ever an inspiration for you or how did that shape you as you continued in the in the role? Yeah, I actually think it's just really special. I mean, I think every game day, um, free game, it's, I think about how fortunate and how blessed I am that that is part of my job, right? Like just the, like the amount of love for the game that you feel in this building, You see it where Howie, I feel like when you watch, you know, anyone senior, how we, you know, pregame, it's like you just see and you just feel how much they care about the sport, how much they care about the players, how much they care about the coaches, how much they care about the organization. And that's ultimately what draws all of us, you know, to this industry is just your love for the game. Maybe it's an experience when you were young. Maybe it's something that made you very curious about the sport. Everyone has their different. Why? But I really don't believe you can do this job without understanding.

just how special it is that this gets to be, you know, my work. That certainly I felt like I had an appreciation of that after being in a totally different career that I get to do football for a living. And so there's very little that I would complain about because, you know, that's just a tremendous opportunity. And, you know, I feel like that's just a very special, special, you know, thing to be able to do. I like talking to you about it, too, because your Y shifts, you know, your overall Y, I'm sure,

stays the same in life, but like your workplace Y maybe shifts a little bit when you're experiencing something like this outside of the environment that you spent, you know, a decade and a half working in. Are you comfortable sharing about your why in football and sort of your what you've discovered your purpose to be within the sport? You know, I would say for me, you know, my journey or like maybe my love of football started when, um, It's so tied up in my dad and my brother. And I remember just my dad grew up in Texas, so football's a religion there. And so it was always just a part of our family.

I remember when we were like really little. We'd always watch the game on Sundays with him. And then, you know, Andrew, my twin brother and I would always ask him, hey, can you go out and play at halftime? He always did that. He'd always, you know, one of us would be the receiver. One of us would be the corner. He'd go out and throw. And like, those were some very early memories.

And then, you know, you move forward and, you know, you're playing in high school and, you know, Andrew's my quarterback. And I'm the receiver. And those are some really special moments. You're playing in college where, you know, Andrew and I are playing for different teams that play each other every year. And family comes out to support you every time. And so football for me is beyond just being the ultimate team game and the bonds that you make with your fellow players and coaches, it was the canvas for so many special moments with my brother, my dad and my family that it's just interwoven to like just the way that just to life right and so I think football in a lot of ways is an expression of life in terms of the adversity you have to overcome you know dealing with the teamwork training and discipline the time that things are going to be hard it is a wonderful game and you know I feel like I've been very much a beneficiary of that being a central part of you know certainly my journey here Adam before we move into the now this is the

most important question, I'm going to ask you this entire show. When you guys were in indie drills, one-on-ones, who won? I would say growing up, it was pretty evenly distributed. There definitely got to be some heated arguments at different times where it was like, was that a penalty or was that not a penalty? It's pretty even. What I will say, and I got to give Andrew credit, is he had the better college career than I did. So Andrew was a really good, was a really good player in college. And I wasn't chabby, but I wasn't certainly not at the level of some of the, certainly some of the other guys who were kind of at the top of their game there. But it was still a wonderful experience for both of us.

You know, I respect that you have the opportunity to totally pad your childhood stats there because who was going to know? And you didn't. So classy move there. I hope your brother takes notice of that and maybe has your back on that one a little bit later down the line. So, okay, I'm curious about like, when you're in this building and the way that you guys talk to each other and the way that you think about things

and your and your background, but also a lot of people with different backgrounds in that building and everyone coming together collectively. Did you find that early on some of the questions you would ask about process ended up being helpful because it was almost a different perspective coming in and asking, why do we do things this way? Or why would we think about this this way? What if we thought about it this way? Was there anything that stuck out to you early on about the productivity of those types of conversations? Yeah, I think the thing that probably stuck out to me was just how welcome those conversations were, right? I think when you look at the way that Howie and the organization have hired, you actually have a lot of people who have come through this front office who have had varied backgrounds, right? Whether it was, you know, Jake Rosenberg, who had a finance background or Bryce, who I mentioned previously, who came from law,

or, you know, Alec who grew up at a different silo. And so I think that there's always this continual process of questioning of, how do we do things better or like, what perspective are you looking for that? And that is something that's thought out from. That starts at the top. And so I don't think that I ever really felt like a click of, oh, this is, you know, this is something that feels either out of place or is unusual because we're constantly trying to get better as a group, as an organization,

in terms of the way that we're thinking about processes, the way that we're thinking about, you know, players, the way that we're thinking about a whole host of different things because if you stay stagnant, eventually people catch up to you. And so I think that having a different lens of thinking about things from maybe a risk pricing or a risk reward perspective was just adding to what was ultimately just like a mosaic of different perspectives that goes across all football operations

and that contributed to the way that we may think about solving a particular problem. And then when you get to go into, okay, this is the time you now must spend on task evaluating, right? You know, taking all of those conversations and turning them tangible, essentially, going out on the pro circuit, on the college circuit, what was scouting life like for you? What did you take from it? What did you see around you?

What did you learn from it? Yeah, I think, you know, for me, it was, you know, I was, the playing experience was helpful in terms of just being able to transition into it. But I think the thing that really jumped out to me was just how ready everybody is just to talk football, right? And so, you know, there's this, I feel like there's this culture here where, you know, if you're going into anyone's office

and they're watching film, whether it's someone's coming into mine or I'm going into someone else's, it's always the natural question is like, oh, who you're watching? And then the next thing, you know, even if it's something on completely different than personnel, like people just want to be able to talk about players and talk about what they see and

you know how they're thinking about them and I found that that is something that was not only great for this building but like when you're going out and you're doing things with other scouts like people just really like talking about the game and that is one of the best ways I think to you know kind of immerse yourself because you have this this wealth of information of things that you've watched or that you've researched or your but you have all these other people who have different opinions and have different perspectives, have had different experiences with team building, and you can read their reports or talk to them about that too, right, as a way of just continuing to grow your perspective, to challenge your

viewpoints. And so I think really it was the openness to talk about that and share that information was really important. I think that that was a really good, you know, just exposure in terms of whenever you're out doing different scouting tasks. I always think what would be most fun for me, if I got fortunate enough to be in a building, would be to read everyone's scouting reports. And to do exactly what you're talking about is just talking to them,

because I always feel like you can get to know people on a very intrinsic level, too, by talking to them about the thing that they love. And in this case, everybody has this incredible passion for the sport. Did that also, in a way, get you sort of fast-tracked immersed into this building and the culture of this building was not just talking to people about this, but really digging in the weeds on the reports and writing and obviously writing your own as well. And really getting into that like talent identification and football language

specific to what the Eagles building is. Yeah. No, I think that's definitely something that, and it's interesting that you talk about language. And I think about, you know, the easiest way to learn a foreign language is just to be immersed in it. Right. And so I think people, people have, it's the same thing with football and evaluation. It's just, you know, immerse yourself in all the different ways and all the different players and all the different player archetypes, college pro, you know, when you're out at practice, talking to people about what they're seeing, like, that's really important, right? And there's no, there's, you know, there's no necessarily a limit on the amount of time that

you can spend doing that, right? And I think it's important if you want to, you know, be really, you know, good at that and be someone who has a formed opinion is to make sure that you're putting yourselves in situations where it's forcing you to do that. And I think that certainly in this building with the caliber of people, when people recognize that people are trying to put in the work and the effort and they're trying to grow, there's so much willingness to help and to participate in that process. And I think also incumbent on me where there might be areas of football operations that, you know, I have exposure to and they may have questions on.

It's just like, you know, it's incumbent on me to also help with if there's questions about that, that I can help them in that ways. And so again, it's, again, football is the ultimate team game. And that's not just on the field. That's, you know, all the way in the building as well, too. Yeah. I would feel like, you know, I'm a writer, you know, but I would like to write the scouting report. But I would be thinking about what does this tell everybody else about me and how I'm seeing it in this moment? and getting those processes, you know, sort of to an expert level as you continued into the, through the building and learning about what specifics are, I guess, like, North Stars for the organization and what things they maybe have on a sliding scale. That to me is such a cool,

almost like archaeological process of understanding this is how we speak here. And we have all of this knowledge and data basically over years. Because it's very how he's been there for so long. And his staff and people in that building have really communicated how to build that, I guess I would call it like an alphabet of what exactly it is that makes an eagle an eagle. And for you, what's that deep dig like and continuing to like build these little pieces of information and make an entire, I guess, case for somebody? Yeah.

I think that part of it is the organization is very clear on what its priorities are when we're going through any player acquisition process. And so when you're an evaluator and when you're analyzing a certain situation, you know, you know what to look for, right? And now the application may be different for a specific player in any given instance. But that's also why, you know, you have meetings and that's why you're talking to other people. people on the staff. That's why you're sharing the way that you have different viewpoints, because sometimes it takes some time to tease that out. And so it's really helpful that, you know, there's a very clear vision from from leadership on the things that we want to do, the things that we want to prioritize, you know, how we think about evaluation as well as roster building. And so

when you, when that North Star is clear, it's, it's not all that difficult to go into the practice of following it. But you just have to make sure that you're really diligent. about it and that's why we're a very process-oriented team. Yeah, I was, I was just reading a book, and it was Bill Parcells is saying, if you, if you are committed to certain qualities or certain traits, do not deviate and try to stick to the process as much as possible if it's proven to be valuable and work for you. And I can imagine that could be a little hard because things come up. And again, you guys are looking everywhere for different people and just different ways to bring new ideas. And it kind of gets me. You talk about.

touched on this earlier in our conversation, Adam, but building teams of highly competitive people and building teams within teams of highly competitive people. I know you have a lot of experience managing teams like that and constructing teams like that, again, from your previous work experience, but doing it in a building like this where every week matters so much and developing communication tools with with coaches and with other executives and with players and and not just building that roster the way that it functions at the highest level, but also internally. What has that part of the team building process been like?

And how do you guys communicate with each other, especially when maybe the bullets are flying externally? Yeah. No, I think that's a good question. Probably one of the, you touch on it a little bit, one of the differences with football and probably were just professional sport generally versus working in the private sector is just how public, you know, your job is. Like, I could leave the trading floor and have a had a down day and I'm not going to hear about it, you know, from anyone. Whereas, you know, if, you know, maybe there's

something that the fan base is not happy about, right? Like, you know, you're going to hear opinion from your neighbor. You're going to hear opinion. You know, it's going to be on the news. Like, that's just, it's a different dynamic that kind of, that permeates it. But what I would say is, you know, I think anytime that you're dealing with high-functioning people, high-functioning teams, it comes down to relationship, communication, and aligning incentives, right? And so we have a great model for that in the way that really Howie and Nick interact, right? So they're talking to each other multiple times a day, going into each other, in and out of each other's offenses. They're in lockstep about the way that they're going to think about big decisions, little decisions,

how they're communicating those decisions, those things. And so it ends up. up being a really good model for everybody on down in terms of how the way that we're supposed to operate with different departments and different you know different divisions and I would say that in general like when we go to relationship right people are not necessarily going to follow you if they don't feel like they somewhat know you and that you see them as a person right and that's a really important component in any business the other thing is when you have people who are highly performing and competitive and, you know, self-starters, right, you want to make sure that you're communicating the why of what you're doing, right? So they may not necessarily like every

decision, but generally people are rational. And when they understand either the context that you can share with them or the rationale for it when you can share it with them, generally there's a better understanding of why maybe something is happening. And then also, people want to be valued in the that they feel like they're contributing to the team's success. And so when you build an environment and you build a culture where, you know, when we win on Sundays, like the team success is our success, you know, people really do buy into what they need to do in order to make sure that we're putting the organization in the best spot possible. And again, that's really easy when you have a model for that of leadership in, you know,

starting literally at the top across multiple different departments. That's something that I think is really special and important whenever you're trying to have to move the organization forward. More on that in a second. We're going to take a quick break and get back to it on the other side. The new Red Bull Dragonberry and Tropicberry Energizers now at McDonald's, made with freeze-dried fruit and an electric burst of flavor. The all-new Red Bull Energizers now at McDonald's. This product may not be right for you.

Pie in caffeine, details of McDonald's.ca. At participating Canadian restaurants, excluding Quebec. You know the feeling. You make a pick in your fantasy draft in the entire room groans because they wanted that player. Or you grab a small school rookie off waivers and you start him right before he goes off in primetime. There's no better feeling than crushing your fantasy football league. I'm JJ Zacharyason, host of the late round fantasy football podcast. Before your draft, our players to target and players to avoid episodes tell you exactly.

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in any in any format again especially with high functioning and highly competitive people when you're thinking about roster building what types of things do still apply over no matter what type of quote unquote roster whether it's an executive staff or a coaching staff or an actual roster of players what has to translate universally between everybody in the building and has to be maybe a standard of culture that is set in in you know identifying traits to put together for all of those people on any type of quote-unquote team that you have within an organization. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, at a very high level, right, you're whether you're building a roster of players or you're building, you know, if Howe's building a staff, right, you're talking about, you know, you're talking about some degree hiring, right? And so, like, talent is something that's just is really important, right? That's a foundational element of you're looking for people who have talent and you're looking for people who have specific skills, whether it's on the football field or whether it's in a coaching staff or on the front

office, right? You're looking for people with specific skills that are going to help give you an advantage versus your competitors. But also with that is, you know, you're looking at the makeup of a player, a person, a staff members, you're looking up with their character, right? You're thinking about, you know, their personal character, you know, their work ethic, what type of teammate they are. All those different variables that affect not only the on-field success, but also the culture of the way that the building may operate because those different things, at some point in an NFL season, you're going to hit adversity, right? And it's not always necessarily how someone's talent that is really important in that moment. Maybe it might be some of their character intangibles that

really help you to get through a certain situation. And so it's really making sure that you're spending the time to think through those things, think through how those things fit together, and how you can maximize both of those things within the organization based off of the resources that you have. Is there anywhere you look for additional inspiration, whether it's outside the building or inside the building, things that you can use tools to motivate the people around you, obviously very self-motivated as it stands.

So it would have to be very specific, right? It would have to resonate. Any sort of messaging or cultural building that you do has to be well thought out. I'm curious where you look for things like that. I think for me it's just you look at people who are leading in everywhere, right? It could be something that you're seeing that, you know, Nick will bring things in our team meeting that maybe another coach said from a different sport or an Olympic athlete.

It can be people who are in government. It could be people who are running a nonprofit, but when you talk about leadership, there's a lot of different principles that are things that carry over no matter what type of organization that you're leading, right? And so I think for me, it's more about being attentive to not only the examples that I have in the building that I can see in terms of the way that they're leading, but also any other outside influence where it's like, is there something that I can learn from that and take from that? There's something that I can do for, from a self-improvement perspective where I can be more effective in growing my leadership skills and things like that. I think it's

more about just being open-minded to all the different sources. opposed to going to a specific source, because I do think that there are a lot of qualities that are pretty broad in general that you can use across different functions in different industries. Man, you teed me up for this, Adam, thank you, because when you're talking about all of this, the thing that comes into my mind is cast a wide net. And to me, I mean, that should be the Eagles motto at this point, just in my opinion, honestly. Like, the Eagles, one of the things that I think is so unique about the organization. And, you know, I happily discuss this to anyone who will listen and not just walk away from me like I'm a crazy lady talking at them is, man,

where, you guys look everywhere. You look for edges in different places that are, I think maybe would be, um, there would be a fear there for, for certain others. Or I think maybe there would be too much uncertainty. And there's not enough of a known quote unquote quantity at the, on the other side or those types of things. What is that like inside the building? Like, I think that the eagle, I think the good word for it is creative, creative in pursuit of edges.

Where, where do you find that in the building? Where do you think the Eagles do that? Yeah, I mean, I'd probably phrase it a little bit differently. I'd say that what is, I'd actually say that this is, you know, very unique about the Eagles is that there is no, what I would call fear-based decision-making in the way that.

And I think that starts from, you know, ownership's willingness to try things that are different and be forward thinking to, you know, everyone knows how he is, uh, is always willing to look for an opportunity to improve the team. He's always looking for an opportunity to be better in every different space. Like he's being able to go and work for somebody who you know is going to swing the bat is incredibly invigorating because there's just so much open-mindedness to ideas and to ways where, uh, again, it's not thinking from a place of what could go wrong. It's more about, well, what could go right?

And trying to be the best version of the organization that we can be. And it even goes into the coaching staff in terms of how aggressively that Nick manages the game. And so I think that is something that is incredibly unique about the organization, that there's a willingness to try and to be progressive and to push the envelope in every different phase. And that doesn't mean that your hit rate's going to be 100%. That doesn't mean that you're not going to at times make mistakes, but that's not something that ends up being an impediment to trying something new

and trying to be exceptional. I mean, there was a, I don't even know where the saying came from, but it stuck with me in a few years ago where, you know, if you're trying to do what everybody else is doing, then you're probably going to have mediocre results. Right. And so it's like, okay, how can we do something? that's different. And I think that that is something that, you know, you certainly feel from

leadership within this organization. It takes a commitment to, in my opinion, between the coaching staff and also the front office and the player as well. And identifying what about that player makes you know that they're going to commit to, in this case, maybe a development process. I think of like a Jordan Milata, for example, where it feels like in hindsight, we all should have seen this coming, but nobody, not many people actually did, right, in terms of the quality of player that he turned into and a captain class type of guy on your roster. So with this, maybe not this specific example necessarily, but just in general, when you are identifying a player and then committing to that player, even if it's a little bit maybe outside the box,

how do you build a sustainable profile? How do you say, okay, this is the short term, this is the medium, this is the long term, and communicate with coaches accordingly? Yeah, I think part of it is just how we're just the framework in which we think about talent identification and talent development in general. So that's something that I think is established organizationally just as a pillar and as a principle. And so, you know, there's an element of, okay, understanding how a player is going to, what you the player is going to be and the amount of time it is going to to end resources it's going to take for a

player to get there and a lot of that requires you know just um not only communication but just buy-in across multiple departments within an organization and and that's something that um you know we've been very much committed to and you know as you said jordan's a great example where you know it took time for him to to get to you know to where he is now but it was certainly worth the investment of was certainly worth the energy. And we had identified somebody who we felt like had not only the physical skills, but the character to become the best version of what we thought he could be. And he's done that.

So I think that just thinking about that lines and making sure that the communication is open about what the expectations are helps to make sure that, look, by the time you're getting to the point where you're bringing a player into the building, it's already been really well vetted about what the things that he's going to need in order to become successful in order for us to maximize him. Does that take agility too? Because I would imagine the parameters or even like the sliding scale of who somebody is can change as that person changes, as their body composition changes, as their personality changes, as they experience life, you know, as they become more of an adult, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. What's the combination that you guys in which you discuss like agility,

expectations and just the ability to pivot when necessary. Yeah, you always have to be willing to adapt, right? Whether that's, you know, because the game's changing, because circumstances change, right? There's always going to be some level of uncertainty, right? Because you can't just plan the future, you can't dictate what the future is going to be or what it's going to hold. So that's just built into, you know, it goes to something that we talked about a little bit

earlier where if you want to, you know, make sure that you're going to get into a position where you can succeed and where you can outperform, you have to know that the road is not necessarily going to be always as intended. That has to be built into how you think about not only your analysis, but how you're going to navigate any given year or multi-year stretch. And so, I think that, you know, to your point, the adaptation is an important part. You have a plan, but you're constantly reevaluating it. And you're constantly reevaluating it. Is this, is this going to help get this player to where they need to be? Is this going to help get the roster where it needs to be? Is this continually the bright approach? Or is there new information that we've received

that maybe requires an adjustment or a tweak or a wholesale change? And so that's just something that we, you know, is just naturally built into what we do. For us on the outside, it's exciting when we can see it manifest in real time. And, you know, the years of football will ebb and flow and seasons will change and all of that. But it seems to be like a universal truth that the Eagles will change how they do things if they see upon reflection that it is worth changing. And so you guys come in and there's, you know,

there's schematic changes, especially on the offensive side. There's all these different things that happen that I think for us on the outside, we see like the results of conversations like that. And what I love about this show and these interviews that we get to do is to learn a little bit more about the process. behind it. And I have to ask you, because I've been dying to ask you this, just something unique that maybe I don't know about or that we don't know about, that the Eagles do that that you're

excited about or that there's something internally that is, you think very unique to the building that I as a process dork might like to, might like to uncover here. No, I think it probably goes back to what we talked about a little bit before, where it's just the fact that it is a, there's no fear. in the decision making, there's no fear in the way that we're going to explore different things. Like that is something that may seem like a little thing, but I really don't think that it is. I think that the ability and the willingness to, what do you want to call it, take risks, whether you want to talk it to, you know, to swing for the fences, whether it's, you know,

having a championship standard, that's something that I think is, you know, fundamental to the way that, you know, ownership, Howie and Nick operate. And I think that that is something that permeates throughout the entire organization. And, you know, I think that's pretty special. And that's what's what makes it, one of the many reasons that makes it, you know, it's a great place to work. Yeah, we have to come up with a slogan for the Roseman era. No, I'm not me. Someone much more talented, probably than me, because it's, I think about like, you know, you just, you're letting it rip, honestly. And it's fun, it's fun to watch just for the layperson sort of sitting on this side of the glass and in this chair because you guys are always up to something. And that's why I'm so glad,

Adam, that we had you on today. I'm so grateful to share a little bit more about your journey and your current role and what you do. Thank you so much for joining me today on this episode of NFL Daily's Power Players. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure. And, yeah, I really appreciate it. And we got to get you to come up with the slogan. Eric, hit the music. We are rolling Adam out in style here. Listeners, thank you so much for joining me today on another episode of NFL Daily's Power Players, of course, with the great Adam Barry, Assistant General Manager for the Eagles. Stay tuned in your feeds. We're going to have a lot coming up for you this week, including Kutz Day, a live show Sunday with Greg Rosenthal. Thanks for listening.

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