Why Eagles exec Adam Berry, twin brother of Browns GM, left Wall Street for NFL

Adam Berry was a managing director at Goldman Sachs in 2022 when he introduced Howie Roseman at a client conference. Roseman was the keynote presenter, and this was a chance for clients in the firm’s credit business to learn about the dynamics of running a football team from a Super Bowl-winning general manager.

For Roseman, it was a chance to evaluate talent. It was a chance to think big.

“No lie,” Roseman texted one of his GM counterparts, “I would hire your brother if I had the opportunity to.”

That counterpart was Andrew Berry, the Cleveland Browns general manager and Adam’s twin brother.

Roseman was immediately attracted to Adam’s presence. Roseman watched Adam, a former Princeton receiver, analyze how a defensive lineman’s stunt forced an offensive lineman to slide and create space for a pass rusher to record a sack. The play was used as an example of how a traditional statistic does not account for what made the play successful — and, for this audience, an illustration of valuing the overlooked.

After the presentation, Roseman indulged Adam when he mentioned he wanted to hire him away after 14 years at Goldman Sachs. Adam, who had a new home in Connecticut, where he and his wife, Amber, planned to raise their family, did not take it seriously. Except it was not a joke. The text message to Andrew was confirmation.

Andrew called his brother and told him Roseman was serious. Adam had kept close tabs on the NFL through his brother, though not with the intent of transitioning from finance to football. There were musings about it at Berry family get-togethers. There was curiosity about work beyond Wall Street. But Goldman Sachs is not a breeding ground for NFL front offices.

Adam, 38, is now entering his third season with the Eagles. He’s the vice president of operations and strategy, with a role in every part of the operation, from scouting to contracts to analytics. He could be on track to become a general manager like his brother, who is in Philadelphia for the Eagles-Browns joint practices this week and Saturday’s preseason game. It was not a route Adam considered before Roseman poached him from Wall Street.

“Because it happened so rarely in football in particular, I didn’t know that was necessarily going to be a path,” Adam told The Athletic. “But giving Howie a lot of credit to where he had a vision for the skills that I have developed in the business world. Having played in college, and having a bit of a football background, of how those things could translate to the role that he envisioned for me here. He was the first person to really see that before myself.”

There had been precedent — Minnesota Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah was once a commodities trader; so was former Eagles executive Jake Rosenberg — but it’s not as if NFL trades are consummated by former loan traders. These transitions were more common in the NBA or MLB. Adam would have to change careers and uproot his family. But Adam is a deliberate decision-maker who weighed risk for a living.

“I just thought it was a perfect fit,” Andrew said. “This is a guy who grew up a huge football fan, played football, college football, and everything, and had built a career in terms of resource allocation and risk management. I really felt like a lot of the same appeal to him working in financial services could be applied in a role that he was going to take on with Philadelphia, just with a product, if you will, that was a lot more fun.

“And also just knowing the opportunity to work for Howie, a Hall of Fame GM, a great organization, a place that I knew would be a great training ground for him, with wonderful people. I was just like, ‘Hey, this is pretty unique. … If you think you want to do a career switch, this is about the best opportunity that you could ask for.’”

Even with the intrigue, he weighed the financial component and a decade-plus of equity built at a major institution. There was the new home and the young family. His wife had a career in Connecticut. He left the office thinking there was no way she would sign off on the change. When Adam arrived home, Amber was outside with their children. The reaction was not what he expected.

“Adam, of course, we’re doing this,” Amber told him. “It’s not a conversation. It’s a done deal.”

Amber suggested that this would be Adam’s dream job.

“She was right,” Adam said.

The Eagles front office had been pilfered between 2019 and 2022 — two executives, including Andrew Berry, left for general manager jobs; four left for assistant general manager jobs — and Roseman sought new talent.

“His belief is to hire smart people, and the Eagles could train them in football,” Andrew said.

“I think that when you’re talking about smart people who have a passion for something, and then when you give them an opportunity to do some things, to test them out, show that they have an instinct for it,” Roseman said.

Roseman learned Adam was a quick study. The key was that Adam’s job on Wall Street included skills the Eagles required on Broad Street. With his duties as the head of U.S. loan trading, he bought and sold a range of loans issued in corporate credit. He weighed risks because he might assess a loan as undervalued. And he needed to come to his clients with ideas and thoughts on how to hedge. He offered news flow to keep clients informed.

What do you think about this?

That’s the question that comes to mind when Roseman considers Adam’s value. It’s what Adam presents to Roseman when he walks into his office.

In the NFL, Berry deals with a range of resources — draft capital, cash, cap space — as his new cost of acquisition. He assesses the value of players. He deals with agents as partners. Relevant qualities that Adam possessed from his previous job proved to be abundant.

Because he ran a business at Goldman Sachs, he better understood Roseman’s decision-making and the dynamics of staff development while navigating different stakeholders. Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie has long discussed how the modern-day football executive has evolved. Roseman is an example and a model.

“At the end of the day, they’re leadership, management, and decision-making positions, and specifically in sports where you have draft capital, you have a salary cap, it’s a resource-allocation problem,” Andrew said. “So while the product is different — you’re not necessarily trading bonds or things like that — a lot of the mechanics are the same.

“It’s like, ‘OK, how do you assess risk? How do you assess impact? How do you assess potential? How do you make strategic trade-offs?’ …It’s about really learning those mechanics, but the actual decision-making skills, the actual strategic elements, there’s a lot of carryover.”

Andrew needed to assure Adam that he could fit into football conversations. Adam questioned how he would be received by scouts, coaches and research analysts when he was not steeped in football culture.

When he was an advanced scout in Indianapolis, Andrew would print off reports for Adam to digest. They would have conversations about decisions. When Adam made the transition, he sought input from scouts and coaches. He spent time in co-workers’ offices to build relationships. He ate lunch in the cafeteria – not at his desk — and used his curiosity to make up for lost time. The Browns visited Philadelphia for joint practices during Adam’s first summer with the Eagles, and Adam visited Andrew’s hotel to review film. The conversations two years later impressed even the Browns GM.

“I think probably the biggest thing is his scouting eyes were refined,” Andrew said. “Now, he’s really strong in that area.”

“We don’t put people in silos here,” Roseman said. “We kind of give them a full picture process of what it’s like to be in the front office. He’s been able to pick up, not only scouting, but learning how we manage our cap and contracts, and doing deals, and watching analytics and player development. He’s a well-rounded executive who feels like he’s been doing it for a long time.”

Adam found that the actual football scouting was not the major transition — his playing career helped — but rather the institutional knowledge he lacked.

“I couldn’t take a player from 2010 and say, ‘Hey, it looks like this player,’” Adam said. “But I think the beauty of this industry is that if you’re willing to put in the time and the energy and the work that you can start, you can build that relatively quickly. And so that’s part of what I’ve tried to do.”

He can’t make up for 14 years. But he can use those 14 years as an asset in other areas.

That especially appealed to Lurie, who touted Adam’s hire at the 2023 league meetings even before the Eagles officially announced it.

“This is just a really, really bright guy from Goldman,” Lurie said then. “And it’s very unusual to be able to entice somebody who has the same character and intelligence as Andrew in many ways. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t develop into a general manager in this league down the road.”

Adam and Andrew Berry stood together before Eagles-Browns practice on Wednesday. If not for Adam wearing Eagles midnight green and Andrew in Cleveland Browns garb, a passerby could not tell them apart. Adam attended the NFL scouting combine with the Eagles for the past two years. It’s one thing to be known as Andrew Berry’s brother. But he’s often confused for the Browns general manager.

“It’s something to chuckle about and, look, it’s an icebreaker,” Adam said. “So any time someone confuses me for Andrew, I’m just like, ‘No, wrong person. Happens all the time. But hey, I’m Adam.’ Because you just never know where having relationships and forming relationships (start).”

Their parents were deliberate about both forging their own identities. They were intentional about splitting up after high school in Bel Air, Md. — Adam to Princeton, Andrew to Harvard. Adam played offense, Andrew played defense. Adam once delivered a block on Andrew to help set up a game-winning touchdown. But those Ivy League games were like family reunions — just as Eagles-Browns meetings are now. After practices this week, their families mingled together. Adam played with Andrew’s children.

Adam is known to be more extroverted. Despite the more public job, Andrew still finds it odd for Adam to get second billing.

“Adam was always an individually talented person growing up,” Andrew said. “He was class president. He was the star receiver. He was third baseman on the baseball team. He was the lead saxophone in the jazz band. He kind of had the Midas Touch…It was no surprise to see the success that he had in college and with his professional life.

“And the other thing is, he is so much more social than I am. So that was a really huge contrast. So it was always very easy for him to be like the frontman in various settings — whether it was athletically, socially, politically, academically, and then obviously professionally. I always admired him for that. And I’m honestly just really proud of him.”

There are panels whose attendees might find Adam’s old job more interesting than Andrew’s current one. Adam worked on nine-figure deals similar to his brother. The difference was the public attention.

Adam’s career change has brought the twins even closer. They would trade work stories before. They live similar stories now.

“I think for him, it’s been really cool to see things through someone who’s coming into a new industry, and doing some of the things that he had done before he got to his position as well, too,” Adam said. “And so it’s just a really fun dynamic.”

It mattered that Adam Berry wore Eagles gear at a football practice. It mattered that he stood outside in 88-degree heat in shorts and a T-shirt with a visor. His wife and children were in the crowd. So were his parents. He wore a suit every day at Goldman Sachs. He went to client dinners at night. It took about a year to find the rhythm at his new job, but there was joy in being around football and participating in office yoga sessions.

This new lifestyle, it turned out, was better for his young family.

“I promised him that he had this unfounded thought that he was going to be away from home even more than he was at Goldman,” Roseman said. “And I told him his family would be way more involved.”

So, yes, the hours are long. But his family attends camp practices and games on Sundays. The Berrys moved during the summer of 2023 and attended a welcome barbecue with the staff and families. There were tours of logistics for games. The Eagles helped facilitate the unknowns, from schools to restaurants to activities.

“One thing I felt was important is I felt like I could see already from my family in Cleveland that this is a whole family change, and the whole family gets to be involved,” Amber said. “I saw a way for us to bridge the gap (from the Wall Street lifestyle). So while I knew there’s going to be a lot of hours and travel and transition ahead, I also knew it’s not Adam doing that. It’s all of us together.”

There’s a reason why so many former college athletes, like Adam, pursue finance. It’s an industry that can satiate a competitive spirit. But even the trading floor is outpaced by the NFL playoffs.

“Is there anything like this in trading?” a fellow Eagles executive asked Adam before the NFC Championship Game.

“No,” he responded. “There’s nothing like that.”

Amplify that with a Super Bowl victory.

“I don’t think that’s something that’s easily replicable,” Adam said.

He’s in his third season and ascended from director to vice president. Like Lurie suggested upon hiring Adam, his name could emerge on potential GM lists in the coming years. Wall Street provided a stable life. Football families are used to moving. There’s always anxiety with job changes. But there’s excitement about the possibilities, too.

“It’s still worth trying, because you’ll never know unless you try,” Amber said. “That mattered to us.” 

That approach was why Roseman wanted to hire him in the first place. Adam is equipped to make decisions. There were times in this process that were uncomfortable. But he assessed the risk and made the trade.

“Sometimes you don’t necessarily think that certain opportunities may be available,” Adam said. “And I think that it’s just a lesson of just always trying to make sure that you think big.” 

(Top photo of Adam and Andrew Berry: Zach Berman / The Athletic)