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PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA - APRIL 23: Makai Lemon of USC celebrates after being selected twentieth overall pick by the Philadelphia Eagles during Round One of the 2026 NFL Draft at Acrisure Stadium on April 23, 2026 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Emilee Chinn/Getty Images)

The Philadelphia Eagles saw how the board was falling and knew that they needed to make a big move in order to secure the player they had their eye on.

Finding an unlikely partner, the Eagles traded with the Cowboys, receiving the 20th overall pick as well as a 2027 seventh-round pick, while sending Dallas the 23rd overall pick as well as two fourth-round selections (Nos. 114 and 137).

And with that, they swooped right in front of the Pittsburgh Steelers, drafting USC wide receiver Makai Lemon. It was a move that nobody was expecting, and least of all, the Steelers.

Makai Lemon Reveals He Was On The Phone With the Steelers When Philadelphia Called

The Steelers held the No. 21 overall pick, and while Dallas was on the clock, they called up Lemon to tell him that he was going to be headed to Pittsburgh. But, that’s when the Eagles swooped in.

“First, I answered the phone and it was the Steelers, and then my phone kept ringing. I look and it’s the Eagles,” Lemon said after he was drafted. “They traded up and they were going to pick me. I feel like everything happens for a reason. They traded up, so it means a lot that they really want me. I’m all in, and they’re going to get everything that I got.”

Philadelphia general manager Howie Roseman also provided his point of view on how everything went down.

“When we get on the clock, we immediately try to contact the player,” Roseman said. “It took us a couple minutes to contact the player and get him on the phone. That hasn’t happened very often, so the clock got down a little lower than we would’ve liked but we were able to get in touch with him and obviously select him.”

“We just felt like this was a player that we wanted to go up and get,” he added. “Just based on where our board was at that time, where we were picking, just felt like it made a lot of sense based on our board. Obviously, when you have a player that you like that’s ranked higher on your board than where you’re picking, you think at every pick that he’s gonna be selected. That’s just the way the draft is, you think everyone’s thinking the way that you are, and so certainly for us, we didn’t want to sit on our hands. We wanted to go get him, and so that’s why we made a trade.”

Howie Roseman Reiterates That ‘A.J. Is A Member of the Eagles’

GettyPhiladelphia Eagles GM Howie Roseman reiterated that A.J. Brown is still on the team during the NFL Draft.

With the Eagles selecting a wide receiver in the first-round, it had many saying that A.J. Brown’s time with the organization has come to an end. But, Roseman made it clear that he’s on the roster and is on the team.

“A.J. is a member of the Eagles,” Roseman said on Thursday. “We don’t have any trades that have been made, or that are done. And I think for us, we’re taking this one day at a time. We’re going to look to improve the team tomorrow, and we’ll continue to address anything that we have to with our roster, not only through this draft weekend, but we’ll continue to look for ways to improve the team throughout the offseason, and as we get into training camp.”