Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio has made it clear in the past that all personnel moves – including but not limited to free-agent signings and trades – are executed by Howie Roseman, the team’s executive vice president of football operations, with very little input, if any, from Fangio.
“Miniscule,” Fangio said last week when asked about his influence on the team’s roster decisions.
You could understand why Fangio has distanced himself from many of Roseman’s moves on his side of the ball, going back to last year’s big free-agent spend on Bryce Huff, who clearly didn’t fit the scheme, and one-year flier on linebacker Devin White, another head-scratcher who didn’t last.
This year’s newcomers haven’t fared much better – Adoree’ Jackson won a starting cornerback job by default, lost it, then got it back before suffering a concussion; Azeez Ojulari was inactive for the first four weeks, played two games, then landed on IR with a hamstring injury; Ogbo Okoronkwo made minimal impact before going on IR with a pectoral tear; and trade acquisition Jakorian Bennett, who dealt with a shoulder injury in Las Vegas that needed surgery, is still on injured reserve as of Monday while he comes back from a Week 3 pectoral injury.
On Jackson, Fangio admitted in a press conference at training camp that the cornerback’s signing was Roseman’s call and that Fangio didn’t even watch tape on the former Titans and Giants defensive back before the Eagles signed him.
About the only positive free-agent or trade addition on defense so far has been Josh Uche, who has played well as a rotational edge rusher, but not well enough for the Eagles to feel great about the overall state of their pass rush. When asked last week if Uche had exceeded expectations, Fangio could only say “neutral.”
Which is why on Monday, Roseman went out and executed his third trade for a defensive player since Wednesday, landing former Dolphins edge rusher Jaelan Phillips for a third-round pick, a move that should satisfy his candid, fickle defensive coordinator even if Fangio had little or no say in it.
Phillips isn’t a game-wrecker in the mold of Myles Garrett, has never made a Pro Bowl, and has battled several severe injuries throughout his college and pro career – at one point, he even gave up playing – but there’s no question that his best season came in 2023, in Fangio lone season presiding over the Dolphins’ defense.
That season, Phillips racked up 6.5 sacks in just eight games – including a stretch of at least one sack in five consecutive games from Weeks 7-12 – before become tearing his Achilles at MetLife Stadium, the league’s annual graveyard for healthy tendons and ligaments.
Phillips made it back for the start of 2024 but suffered a friendly fire partial ACL tear in Week 5 when his knee collided with teammate Jordan Poyer’s helmet in a game against the Titans, again ending Phillips’ season prematurely.
This year, Phillips has come back strongly. He had three sacks and seven QB hits playing for a terrible Dolphins defense. More importantly, he played more than 70% of the defense’s snaps, showing that his health and conditioning are up to speed despite the lower-leg injuries he sustained in consecutive seasons.
This is one move Fangio won’t want to distance himself from, as Phillips’ addition theoretically gives the defensive coordinator more ammo in the edge rush but perhaps more importantly covers up the defense’s other blemish at cornerback opposite Quinyon Mitchell.
If the trio of Phillips, Jalyx Hunt and Nolan Smith (also soon to come off injured reserve) do its job, along with a solid rotational piece in Uche, Fangio can scale back on the blitzing that he’s done at a much higher rate this year to compensate for the losses of Josh Sweat and Milton Williams in free agency.
Fangio’s blitz rate so far through eight games is between 22-23 percent, depending on the stat-tracking site. Some analytics sites chart SIM pressures or “exchange pressures,” which is a four-man rush but blitzes a second-level defender while dropping a front-line defender, as a blitz, while some don’t.
Either way, 22 to 23 percent puts the Eagles at the middle of the pack in the NFL, at 15th. Last year, the Eagles ranked 28th in blitz percentage, per both NFL Pro and Pro Football Reference.
Fangio’s history shows that he typically doesn’t like to blitz at rates higher than 20 percent. He’s famous for shutting down Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs in the Super Bowl last year without calling a single blitz.
This season, Fangio only blitzed about 14 percent in the season opener against the Cowboys, and watched Dak Prescott connect with CeeDee Lamb seven times for 110 yards – mostly against Jackson – in a near-upset. The Eagles won because Lamb dropped several balls, including a deep pass late in the fourth that could’ve changed the outcome.
The Eagles had just the 16th-best pressure rate in Week 1 along with a -0.02 EPA per pass and didn’t record a single sack, per NFL Pro, causing Fangio to reverse course by Week 2, when his blitz rate jumped to 29%, followed by 38% in Week 3 against the Rams, seventh-highest that week among NFL teams.
Every time Fangio rushes five or more, he devotes at least one less body to coverage, which has at times exposed the Eagles’ deficiency at the cornerback spot across from the superstar Mitchell, who has often been asked this season to shadow the opponent’s top receiver. Multiple sites that track coverages show that Fangio has played a much higher rate of man coverage this season than zone, leaving their corner opposite Mitchell in some dangerous 1-on-1s.
The Eagles have acknowledged this deficiency time and again, first signing the veteran Jackson in March to compete with 2023 fourth-rounder Kelee Ringo but quickly trading for Bennett in August after Fangio made it clear in his press conferences that neither Jackson nor Ringo had blown him away.
Fangio also decided that defensive back Cooper DeJean is his best option opposite Mitchell when the Eagles are in base defense, about 20% of the time, and Roseman continued to pad the secondary last week, trading for Jets slot cornerback Michael Carter II and for toiling Ravens cornerback Jaire Alexander.
It’s clear that Roseman believed his best shot at helping Fangio produce the best defense possible was to upgrade the pass rush with the closest thing to a sure thing that he could attain while continuing to make dart throws at the secondary.
If the Eagles can lean heavier on a four-man rush going forward, especially against opponents like the Packers on Monday night, the Lions in Week 11, Cowboys in Week 12, Chargers in Week 14, Bills in Week 17 and in the postseason, they can better masquerade their issues at cornerback.
Maybe even enough to win another Super Bowl.
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