Undrafted Eagles rookie Carson Strong is quickly making a name for himself

It was an intriguing close to May’s first week. On Thursday, the Philadelphia Eagles‘ rookie class reported and signed their first NFL contracts, one day after several of the veterans met with the media. On Friday, 12 undrafted free agents put pen to paper. One of the more notable is Carson Strong, a six-foot-four, 215-pound signal-caller who cut his teeth with the Nevada Wolf Pack at the NCAA level.

Several draft pundits had the two-time Mountain West Offensive Player of the Year graded as someone who could hear his name called somewhere between Round 3 and Round 4 of the most recent NFL Draft, but as all seven frames of the selection meeting wrapped and former Iowa State Cyclones quarterback Brock Purdy, this year’s ‘Mr. Irrelovent’, closed the show as the 262nd player taken, there were crickets in the Strong camp.

Tap those friends of yours, and wake them up. Strong is making quite the name for himself, and it isn’t because he’s the only quarterback present now that Philly’s other undrafted QB prospect, Bushnell Cup Winner E.J. Perry, signed with the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Get used to discussions about Carson Strong. He’s going to be around.

So, here’s how things reportedly went down. The Eagles’ brass was very intrigued with Strong but signed the two-time First Team All-Ivy League star, Perry, as they thought landing Carson was out of the question. Well, things worked out better than the Birds could have hoped for.

Carson Strong signed on with Philly, earning a lot of coin in the process. He gets a $20,000 signing bonus and a $300,000 base guarantee, one of the largest guarantees ever for an undrafted free agent.

He joins an Eagles quarterback room housing QB1 Jalen Hurts, Gardner Minshew, and Reid Sinnett, but there’s no need to overthink in terms of why he got all of that money. Again, he’s going to be around for a while.

During his Friday afternoon visit with the media, Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni spent a little time talking about the new guy.

"I thought he did a good job today of just… You know, it’s a lot. He’s reading plays differently. He’s running different plays. To have to go back there and manage everything… One thing I’m always impressed by, or not impressed by, is when a guy can come out and just call a play. There’s a lot of guys that don’t call plays, right? They’re looking to the sideline. We call plays in the huddle, so he was pretty smooth with that. He studied hard. He got ready for this day today. He was really sharp. He knew what to do (and) where to go with the football. He (has) a big arm. You definitely can see that, but those are tools to work with. His size and arm strength is noticeable when he’s out there."

In four seasons and 32 games at the collegiate level, Carson Strong completed 68.1 percent of his passes, racking up 9,368 passing yards in the process while tossing 74 touchdowns versus only 19 interceptions. If that translates, Philly has something on its hands and in its wheelhouse.

There were questions all offseason about whether the Birds would add a quarterback or draft one. In the end, they did neither, but they got lucky.

Rather than having to spend draft capital on a signal-caller, they added one as an undrafted rookie free agent, and they got a guy who, in all likelihood, should have been drafted anyway. Make no mistake about it. This guy can play. It should be fun to see how he progresses as we move through the rest of the spring and the summertime.