With the Pittsburgh Steelers on the phone, Makai Lemon was moments away from taking center stage and drinking in a raucous ovation from the host city of the 2026 NFL Draft.
Then came another call that changed the trajectory of his burgeoning NFL career.
The Keystone State's other football team, the Philadelphia Eagles, true to their mascot's form, swooped in to steal the USC wide receiver from the Steelers.
"I was definitely shocked," Lemon said of the Eagles trading up to select him. "Definitely. I couldn't be more happy that they did. I'm super blessed."
With Lemon being prepped by Pittsburgh to hear his name called as the No. 21 pick, general manager Howie Roseman and the Eagles traded up from No. 23 overall with their archrivals, the Dallas Cowboys, at No. 20.
"It was the right time, the right team," Lemon said, "and everything worked out just how it was supposed to be."
Lemon thought he was supposed to be a Steeler, joining a WR corps with DK Metcalf and Michael Pittman. An unexpected phone call later, he found out he'd be joining DeVonta Smith, Dontayvion Wicks and Marquise Brown on the Eagles. His draft night tale might well have better prepared him to deal with the drama that could come with playing for Philly and the wideout who will be viewed as the eventual replacement of A.J. Brown.
NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport reported shortly after Lemon was picked that the Eagles are operating with the expectation that Brown will be traded, likely after June 1.
Before any of that, of course, the Eagles did pull off a trade, calling Lemon to let him know they'd moved up and would be drafting him, not the team he was just on the phone with.
"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. "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."
Lemon's conversation with Pittsburgh led to a tinge of anxiety for Roseman.
"When we get on the clock, we immediately try to contact the player," said Roseman, who only advanced his reputation for being a masterful wheeler-dealer on draft night, similarly to how he once worked a Day 1 swap to obtain Brown from the Tennessee Titans. "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."
Roseman somewhat danced around admitting that he believed Pittsburgh was going to take Lemon, simply stating Lemon was the prospect they wanted and they did what they needed to get him.
"We just felt like this was a player that we wanted to go up and get," he said. "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."
There were plenty of surprising moments on Day 1 of the draft -- from Carnell Tate to the Tennessee Titans at No. 4 to the Los Angeles Rams stunningly picking quarterback Ty Simpson at No. 13 to Reuben Bain falling to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at No. 15.
The story behind how Roseman and the Eagles dialed in to get Lemon, the receiver they wanted and needed, definitely ranks up there.
