The Eagles moved up 17 spots in the seventh round and they didn't even draft a football player.
Instead, they took rugby player Jordan Mailata from Australia, specifically from the South Sydney Rabbitohs.
The Eagles drafted Mailata, 20, as an offensive tackle. He certainly has the size, listed at 6-foot-8, 346 pounds. He quickly becomes the biggest player on the roster and based on his rugby highlights is a freak athlete.
In order to take the big rugby player, the Eagles traded their No. 250 pick as well as one of their seventh-round picks in next year's draft to the Patriots.
While Mailata is a great athlete, he's obviously a project. He's never played American football and the idea of trying to play professionally didn't come about until pretty late in this process.
Mailata performed in a pro day in March for international players and it's likely that's where the Eagles got a good glimpse of him. He then visited with the Eagles. Apparently, Eagles offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland took a liking to him.
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"After the first set of meetings with him doing board and film work, every other meeting I had (with other coaches and front office personnel), he was just in," Mailata said to NFL.com. "The ever-presence of a man, out of nowhere he would just pop up to see what I was doing."
