PHLY Philadelphia Eagles Podcast - Emergency pod: Fred Johnson is BACK, Howie Roseman finds his swing tackle

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

Another Howie Roseman Sunday trade, this time bringing back lovable swing tackle Fred Johnson, who fared so well for the Eagles when called into action replacing Jordan Mailata and Lane Johnson over the past few years. EJ Smith, Fran Duffy and Bo Wulf react to the second move of the day. Note: After this pod was completed, the Eagles traded away Darian Kinnard to the Green Bay Packers for a 2027 6th round pick. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the P.H.L.Y. Eagles podcast live from the Xfinity Mobile Studios, presented by Xfinity, Dudat Dental, and True Mark Financial Credit Union, Boe Wolf, E.J. Smith, Fran Duffy, and we are here to talk about the return of Fred Johnson, the swing tackle extraordinaire. The Eagles sending a seventh round pick to the Jacksonville Jaguars, and you got to be thinking to yourself, who could have possibly seen this. Yes, come. Hit it, Julian. Do you want me to give you more, more headliners?

No, give me a goofy one. Let's, let's, let's, let's, name a team in the AFC. Oh, I, I know which one I'm going to name because I saw it already. Give me the Jacksonville Jaguars. Listen, Eagles need some offensive line help. We've been taught, we've been talking about it. They make a trade to get Fred Johnson back in the building. Yeah.

And what they give up is, Big Fred. Is Matt Pryor and Eli Ricks. Oh, I didn't see prior. That's a win. I mean, listen, that's why we did that exercise, just for that. 31 shots, get one, and we got one. The compensation could have been a little closer. No, we did.

We ended up talking about the compensation, and I think we settled on a six would have been fair. We floated a seventh. We felt like, maybe the Jaguars don't do that. And not to telegraph how I feel about this trade, but yeah, I feel a little bit like wondering what happened with Fred and Jacksonville, you know? Go ahead and get rid of Red Angelica. Give us your thoughts on the trade. Yeah, so obviously the Eagles traded for Fred Johnson.

The swing tackle position is one that we've spent a lot of time talking about in the last week. It was not as strong as it had been in years past. And Fred Johnson was the Eagle swing tackle last season and gave them a lot of quality snap. So the fact that they sent 2026, seventh round pick to the Jacksonville Jaguars in exchange for a quality swing tackle. Again, I don't really know exactly what the Jaguar's evaluation of Fred Johnson was this summer. but I know what he looks like with the Eagles and with Jeff Stalin has his offensive line coach. And it is an upgrade for the Eagles. So really, you know, when I saw the compensation, I was surprised that the Jaguars did it.

And I think this really does shore up one of the few spots, especially on offense, one of the few spots that we have concerns with going into the Eagles regular season. You know, if they need a tackle on either side for a game or two or in a pinch, you know, in a reserve role. Again, we've seen Fred Johnson kind of fill all of those different roles for the Eagles over the last two seasons. and really last season alone. So yeah, no, I think it's a great move for the Eagles. And very classic, like, Howie Roseman move to, you know, let the guy sign somewhere else in free agency. Obviously, you give up the seventh to bring him back. But honestly, the value that he brings to the Eagles offensive line, having that reliable swing tackle,

I definitely think that it's hard to, it's hard to argue with this trade. All right, Fran, over to you. Why might Jacksonville not have valued Fred Johnson so highly? Is it fair to say he's a kind of a very specific? type of player. Yeah, I think that he is a specific type of player in terms of just his overall size. He's not the most athletic offensive tackle that you're going to get. And that's why I think the contract in terms of what he got on the open market kind of match that. But the Eagles know where they're getting. And I think that that's certainty for a team that is, you know, that has Super Bowl aspirations once

again, you're going to pay for that certainty. And I think that that's why this move does ultimately make sense for both sides. You know, Jacksonville, where they're at, what their team build, You know, if you've got young players there on the roster as you're getting down to this point in the calendar where it's like, you know, well, we've got these guys pretty close. Would you rather have player X and a seventh or Fred Johnson? He's all right, let's take the draft pick. Let's get another shot at a player next spring. And so I do think that's probably the primary motivation there from Jacksonville's end of things. I do want to say that I think this is good process by the Eagles.

You know, you could argue, well, why didn't they just bring back Fred Johnson in the first place? Well, he signed for presumably a little bit more than they were willing to pay. And so they signed Kendall Lamb on the cheap. They signed Matt Pryor on the cheap. They use sixth round picks on Cameron Williams and Miles Hinton. And you hope that between those four bets, one of them pans out and you feel good about moving on from Fred Johnson. You go through all of the summer. And it turns out that you don't feel good enough about those things.

Kendall Lamb just didn't look good enough. Miles Hinton started strong and was a little bit iffy. Cameron Williams is certainly not ready to be a guy who was active on game day. And so, okay, you go back and you send a seventh round pick. They've got all kinds of picks. It's a very meager price. This is good process by Howard Roseman. I think that that has to be set.

Sad day for the Kendall Lamb hive. Yeah, he really tailed off toward the end of the summer. You know, I definitely, I feel like we shared some intrigue in Kendall Lamb at the beginning of training camp. but by the end of things, I mean, the Jets game was really ugly for him. So, yeah, no, I definitely, I mean, I'm curious if you guys, maybe you looked it up before we got on here. But Fred Johnson played 480 snaps for the Eagles last season. Like that is a significant amount of snaps. Yeah.

Played on both sides of the offensive line. Again, he gave them, I mean, and a few of those games, he gave them really quality play. You know, not necessarily like a bookend tackle. Like, of course, he's a swing tackle, a depth guy. But, no, I really do. I feel like I was almost a broken record how often I was talking about just not feeling great about number six, seven, and eight on the game day, you know, offensive line, you know, those reserve guys. And now you're telling me it's Fred Johnson, it's Drew Kendall and Darian Kennard. Like, okay, you can talk me into that group.

Well, let's let's think about that for a minute. I mean, we're going to get some answers here soon. But do you think that this means Matt Pryor doesn't make the team? Do you think Pryor still makes it? who do you think is the is the person who gets pushed off the roster by this move friend i'll start with you i haven't sent my 53 yet uh i i think it's darian canard but now canard was on the very much on the bubble i was going to go heavy at offensive line i'll probably still maintain that number um but i think prior being inactive the other night and it kind of goes to what we're saying

about Fred Johnson. I think there's a level of certainty with Matt Pryor where they know what they're getting, especially with his versatility with Dary and Kinnard. I think I said this might have been last week. Like, Darren Kinnard is hoping to be Matt Pryor. Like you're hoping to grow into that role. Is that like, you know, big, powerful like tackle guard swing player? You know you have that with Pryor. I just now I'm thinking that Kinnard might be the hot man out there. Although, actually, no, I take it back. It's probably Kendall Lamb. Although, did I have Ken I don't even know if I I didn't have him on. I didn't have him on my 53 at this point.

So, yeah, it'd be one of those two players. I still don't know what to do with Brett Tooth. It feels silly that they would keep him. But Stout is not wasting those reps. He got every single rep. Yeah, I just, I don't, I think for, he's like the perfect vested veteran that you bring back on the practice squad. I don't know.

I think prior being inactive was surprising to me and probably does speak to the view they have of them. of half of him in the building. But I just, I mean, Dary and Kinnard also offers some of that versatility. Like, I don't know. I think it's close between the two of them. I probably lean prior because I trust Jeff Stoutland's evaluation of these guys more

and the fact that he didn't play. But I do wonder, I think that that A spot is going to be interesting to keep an eye on for sure, I guess what I would say going into this. I think that this shuts the door on Brett Tooth, though. I don't think that Brett Tooth, I just, I didn't have them on originally and I definitely wouldn't have them on now. The last thing I want to say on Fred Johnson, E.J., and I think you can speak to this well, is from the outside, I mean, Fred Johnson is like an ultimate vibes guy.

You know, on the field, he's doing great celebrations in the locker room. You know, he's all over the social videos. Guy loves a camera. If you were worried at all about, you know, the post-Super Bowl vibes, Fred Johnson helps bring him back. Go ahead, friend. I'm telling you right now, like, and I'm being a thousand percent earnest with this, the eagle social team like there are people on that team that are shedding like tears of joy tonight like literally like someone calling like ordering cakes delivered to the house like it is a

celebration for the eagle social media team tonight yeah he is he has an interesting story i wrote about it last year um he has a really good perspective on life he came from really difficult circumstances you know it got basically a background in poverty and had to overcome a lot to get to where he is and struggled early in his career with self-belief and coaches that maybe didn't believe in him as much. And he talked about how, I mean, quite frankly, like Jeff Stoughtland changed his life, not only changed the trajectory of his career, but really changed how he views a lot of things and views himself in some ways. And, you know, it was really like, I guess, moving story about the fact that he had kind of gotten to the Eagles without ever having a coach really believe in him

the way that Jeff Stoutland did, or at least not articulate how much that Jeff Stoutland believed in him. He had a coach in college that was similar, but really having that in the NFL seemed like it was kind of a breaking, or kind of an inflection point for him in his career. And, you know, I think that that is important to remember when you think about like, okay, what did he look like in Jacksonville? And now, why is he, you know, why, why do we feel so much better about him in an Eagles uniform necessarily compared to how he might have looked somewhere else? So, yeah, I think it's a great fit, both, you know, vibes guy, but also for him as a player, I think he really has played his best football with the Eagles. And I don't

think that was a coincidence that that that first press conference will be appointment viewing for regals fans we do have a super chat to get to uh let's flash that band boy up from marty bomb if sam howell got an emergency pod there would have been riots if fred didn't get one then you know we are we are here to serve and the only thing we ask for you in return is to comment on the video like the video subscribe to the channel tell your friends break into your friends houses open their laptops and subscribe to the channel on those things we don't care if you're doing it dirty we need those numbers up okay so I kick our family out I kick my family out for the emergency pot it's not a thing you

admit on Sunday night I mean I mean that that is definitely a strongly worded version of what actually happened but if I'm not sweaty but if I get sweaty it's because I had to dust my nephew in a race right before we kind of came on here I don't know if it's that much of a flex. He's nine. He's still working on. I'm still working on the quick twitch muscles there. All right, gentlemen.

Thank you for being available. Thank you, Julia. I will see you in a couple hours when the Eagles trade for Isaiah Rogers or whoever else it is. And we get back on the emergency pod style. So until then, thanks for watching everybody. We will talk to you tomorrow at 2 o'clock. And as always, we love you.