Howie Roseman

ALL THE FANS and reporters yearning to know the identity of the Eagles' first-round draft choice before Thursday's start of the NFL draft should have just called James Evans, of Groveton, Texas. Evans is a rancher with about 200 head of Angus cattle, he said Friday evening, from beneath the brim of a black cowboy hat, something one rarely encounters in the NovaCare auditorium. Evans said he has some horses, too, used to break horses when he was younger. But more important, Evans is the stepfather of Oklahoma offensive tackle Lane Johnson, whom the Birds took fourth overall, their highest draft selection in 14 years.

The first three picks the Eagles made in the NFL draft, including their second- and third-round selections, have Chip Kelly's imprints all over them. The two players the Eagles took on Friday night - Stanford tight end Zach Ertz and LSU defensive tackle Bennie Logan - played on two of the three teams that beat Oregon in Kelly's last two years there. And while Kelly never faced Oklahoma during his four seasons as Ducks head coach, tackle Lane Johnson, the Birds' top pick, played in an up-tempo offense that ran almost as many plays last season as Oregon's.

The following is by Rich Hofmann and first appeared on the Daily News Live blog on phillydailynews.com: OVER THE YEARS, the Eagles have gotten into the most trouble when they have overthought things, when they have outsmarted themselves. And make no mistake: There was plenty of opportunity here for the Eagles to outsmart themselves. Given that tackles Eric Fisher and Luke Joeckel went 1-2 in the draft, the squeeze was quickly put on teams that needed a tackle. Given that Miami traded up into the third spot to take Dion Jordan - presumably because the Dolphins thought Chip Kelly would take his old Oregon defensive end/linebacker - there likely were several teams who might have been talked into making a deal with the Eagles to move into the No. 4 spot.

In football, there are only three possible outcomes: Win, lose or draw. In the draft, the possibilities are endless, even for the Eagles, who will select fourth overall when the NFL's annual roll of the dice commences Thursday night. Will they select Central Michigan tackle Eric Fisher? Will he even be there? Will Chip Kelly choose his former player, Oregon outside linebacker Dion Jordan, with his first pick as Eagles coach? Or will he choose Oklahoma tackle Lane Johnson? Or maybe Utah defensive tackle Star Lotulelei?

WE ENVISIONED all sorts of complicated scenarios and harried phone calls in the NovaCare war room, but Chip Kelly said the evening was really pretty simple and sane. "Exactly as the draft went. We had the three OTs and Dion ," Kelly said, after telling reporters there were four players the Eagles entered the draft feeling they'd be comfortable taking fourth overall. Lane Johnson from Oklahoma, the former quarterback, former tight end, former defensive end, was generally considered the third-best offensive tackle in a draft where OTs were the stars, and he became the newest Eagle last night, taken with the team's highest draft pick since Donovan McNabb arrived second overall in 1999.

If Andy Reid were still the coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, there is no question what the team would do with the fourth pick of the NFL draft on Thursday night. Reid would request that the player-personnel department run by Howie Roseman take the biggest offensive tackle still available. That would have been a solid decision, just as it will be if Chip Kelly makes the same one, but it is also in keeping with the straight line of Reid's draft history. In nine of the 14 drafts with Reid as head coach, depending on which side of the ball required more attention that year, the Eagles took either an offensive or defensive lineman with their initial selection.

The Eagles have been calling other teams looking for partners to trade out of the No. 4 spot in the NFL draft, according to two NFL sources. General manager Howie Roseman has reached out to at least two NFL general managers in an attempt to have a deal in place in case the Eagles don't like the players left on the board, the sources said. The draft begins Thursday evening with the first round. Rounds 2-3 will occur Friday, with the final four rounds taking place Saturday. Roseman's willingness to unload the fourth overall pick comes as little surprise.

TRIAL BALLOONS were launched Tuesday into the gathering trade winds, a league source said, as the NFL moved toward Thursday's first round of the draft. The source said an actual trade this far ahead of the draft would be rare. Several teams choosing in the top 10 are said to be interested in trading down; the question has been whether they will find partners in a deep draft that seems to lack high-end talent. One team that definitely fits in that looking-into-trading-down category is the Eagles.

The rise in tackle Lance Johnson's NFL draft stock can be summed up in 140 characters: Junior college quarterback turned Oklahoma offensive tackle puts up freakish combine numbers, climbs draft boards, and is now a top-10 pick.   The Twitter version, of course, is only a snippet of Johnson's story. While his ascension can accurately be described as meteoric, it does not take into account the No. 1 reason many teams have the offensive lineman rated as a first-round talent: his tape.

THE FIRST-YEAR coach who had the worst draft luck in Eagles history might have been Bert Bell. Bell, who helped found the franchise in 1933, took over as owner-coach in '36, just as the NFL adopted Bell's idea of a college draft. And Bell's Eagles got the first-ever pick, after going 2-9 in 1935. It was quite an opportunity. Bell used it on the first-ever Heisman Trophy winner, running back Jay Berwanger, of the University of Chicago. But Berwanger didn't want to play pro football, at least not for the Eagles.