Philadelphia Eagles stayed winning after NFL Draft with top 2023 UDFA

The Philadelphia Eagles absolutely crushed it in the 2023 NFL Draft. General manager Howie Roseman, with his team fresh off of an appearance in the Super Bowl, was armed with two first-round picks including the 10th overall pick to start things off. He ended up landing both Jalen Carter and Nolan Smith off of the vaunted Georgia Bulldogs defense in the first round before adding Sydney Brown and Tyler Steen in the third round.

They even added Georgia cornerback Kelee Ringo in the fourth round, giving them arguably the best NFL Draft class of any team in the league all things considered. They even threw a trade for running back D’Andre Swift into the mix on Draft weekend this year.

But the Eagles weren’t done winning when the Draft ended. After the 2023 NFL Draft, they went out and landed arguably the best overall prospect available among the undrafted free agents this year: Alabama’s Eli Ricks.

Philadelphia Eagles added CB Eli Ricks after the 2023 NFL Draft

You can’t ask for much better than this when it comes to undrafted free agent signings, especially at a position like cornerback. The Philadelphia Eagles made a ton of waves this offseason by bringing back both Darius Slay and James Bradberry, somewhat surprisingly. They were not only able to retain those guys, but steal Kelee Ringo in round three when some people thought he would be off the board before the end of the second, and then get a guy like Eli Ricks who was coming off the board routinely in the third or fourth round of most mock draft predictions.

NFL.com’s Lance Zierlein had Ricks graded as a round 5-6 prospect and had this to say about him:

"A long-limbed cornerback with an impressive physical profile, Ricks is in need of more experience to sharpen his skills and recognition. He is a press-man cornerback with a relatively smooth pedal and an ability to push and punch receivers with accuracy from long distance. He’s often a step slow to find top gear when opening to run laterally or vertically, but he’s a human blanket against short and intermediate routes without much wiggle to them. Ricks needs to be more assertive against the run and could struggle on an island, but his traits and press talent should fit in the right scheme.Lance Zierlein, NFL.com"

The last couple of years have to have been extremely humbling for Eli Ricks. Although the statistic shared by Pro Football Focus about him not allowing any touchdowns in coverage last year, he was only on the field at Alabama for 233 coverage snaps. Among those coverage snaps, how many throws were credited toward going in his direction. Again, it’s not to downplay the production Ricks had, but it goes to the point of him not having played a ton this past year.

Ricks was a five-star prospect coming out in the class of 2020 who wound up looking like an absolute star his first year on campus at LSU. He had four interceptions, two that went back for touchdowns, and the hype train was chugging along despite the fact that he only played eight games in 2020.

In 2021, Ricks was limited to six games and picked off just one pass. In 2022, he played nine games which included just 233 coverage snaps according to Pro Football Focus.

The talent and physical makeup are there and they’ve always been there. As you could argue is the case for players like first-round pick Jalen Carter and other guys who really need to get into the right environment at the next level, I don’t know that there’s a more perfect fit for Ricks and I don’t know that there’s a more perfect spot for him to land than a place like Philadelphia.

He’s going to be able to learn behind a couple of the best veterans in the game, and he will have plenty of great competition from his peers in this rookie class, including a fellow former SEC star in Kelee Ringo.

I think this is a great pickup for the Philadelphia Eagles and it’s like the team had an additional Day 3 pick. Chalk up another W for Howie Roseman and the Philly front office.