We watched last offseason as the Eagles lost Josh Sweat, Milton Williams, Isaiah Rodgers and several other key free agents from the Super Bowl championship team.

Should we expect more of the same this offseason?

Howie Roseman warned Thursday that for the Eagles to continue retaining their best players they’re going to have to move on from valuable but lesser players.

That’s just life in a salary cap world.

The cap just doesn’t allow you to pay everybody or keep everybody. The challenge is to stay competitive while dealing with the inevitable free agency losses. So far, Roseman has managed to do this five years in a row.

“As you get better, you have a natural arc of the team,” Roseman said. “I think that when you look at our team, we drafted a lot of offensive players, we resigned a lot of offensive players, (then) we drafted a lot of defensive players that were young on rookie contracts. 

“There’s natural transition in what we do. I’m not making an excuse or anything, but there’s a national transition in that in terms of what you’re paying your guys, which side of the ball you’re paying guys who are coming up. 

“The important thing for us is that there are players that we can’t lose. I mean obviously, we are going to do what’s best for us …  and we want to keep (players) around here because they’re really good players, homegrown players that are really good people that are part of our core.

“With that, you’re going to have to make sacrifices. That’s on me to make sure that the sacrifices we make are filled in with really good players, again.”

So if you lose a Josh Sweat, you better draft a Jalyx Hunt. And if you lose Milton Williams, you better have a Moro Ojomo. And if you lose a Kenny Gainwell, you better have a Tank Bigsby.

So far, Roseman has been able to draft or acquire players to fill in the blanks. That’s how you keep the salary cap down, by having as many starters as possible on cheap rookie contracts.

As those players approach their second contracts, Roseman faces this decision of whether he has to keep them or he needs to let them go.

You can’t have 22 players making $20 million a year, so you can’t keep everybody. That’s where Roseman’s track record in the draft comes into play. As long as he’s hitting on guys and replenishing the roster with cheap, young talent, he’ll be able to keep those guys that, as he said, “we can’t lose.”

Among the Eagles currently due to hit free agency this spring are Dallas Goedert, Nakobe Dean, Reed Blankenship, Jaelan Phillips, Adoree’ Jackson, Marcus Epps, Fred Johnson, Brandon Graham and Jahan Dotson.

Then there’s guys like Nolan Smith and Jalen Carter, now eligible for extensions, and Jordan Davis, who is signed for 2026 on a one-year tender.

“I’m proud, since (Sirianni) has been here, of our 1st- and 2nd-day draft success. I think we’ve drafted 15 guys since Nick has been here on the first and second day, and 14 of them (all but Sydney Brown) have been long-term starters,” he said. “We’ve got to keep hitting like that. 

“I know that’s hard, but we’ve got to keep doing it. That means we have to have a good process. We’ve got to understand the people that we’re bringing into the building. We’ve got to understand the roles and the vision that we have for them when they’re playing.

“If we do that, good things will happen. We’ll be able to keep the players that we need to keep under long-term contracts and have an influx of young players that are really good that can play at a high level.”