PHILADELPHIA — The improvement in the Eagles defense from the first day of training camp to Sunday morning’s 14th day was clear. The offense doesn’t have as much punch as it did in late July and early August.
The defense seemed to excel over the weekend, winning both Saturday and Sunday’s practice. The Eagles will have a closed walkthrough on Monday before returning to practice Tuesday through Thursday.
So how good can this unit really be? That was the exact question defensive coordinator Vic Fangio was asked before Sunday’s practice, which lasted nearly two hours.
“So, I like our guys,” he said. “I like our guys as individuals. They’re all good guys. I like the unity. I love working with them. Time will tell. We haven’t played any real games yet and this opening game against this offense is going to be very challenging. I think that’s a question that’s better asked mid-season.”
The opening game will, of course, be in Brazil on September 6 against the Green Bay Packers. The Eagles only have one more preseason game left before they have to reduce their roster to 53 players on August 29.
It’s a young group that the old-fashioned Fangio is expected to mold. There are some veterans like cornerback Darius Slay, defensive ends Josh Sweat and Brandon Graham, but also many new faces like rookie cornerbacks Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean, rookie Isaiah Rodgers and linebackers Devin White, Zack Baun and Jeremiah Trotter, Jr.
“I think as you can see, the sky’s the limit, we have a ton of talent,” said second-year cornerback Kelee Ringo. “For those guys to be able to properly incorporate their talents into the scheme is going to help us. I’ve seen that all camp, but we’ll see.”
Tight end Dallas Goedert has been playing against the defense since the start of training camp, and he echoed Ringo’s sentiment that the sky is the limit for him.
“We have some experienced players on the outside, guys like Slay, who will teach the DBs all the time,” he said. “We have two inside linebackers, Jalen Carter and Jordan Davis, who can do anything. It’s really up to them how good they want to be. But I can see both of them being a big problem in the NFL for a long time.”
“The linebackers have been flying. We have four or five of those guys that fight and look really good every day. I have the most confidence in the world in the defense. I think they can really help us a lot this year.”
Fangio continues to mix and match his personnel on the second and third levels of defense often, and that could continue into the season as he looks to assert himself against other teams’ offenses and play to his personnel’s strengths.
He has shown a lot of flashes, something he hasn’t exactly been known for in his 40-plus years as a coach. It was thought he would do that a lot in camp, especially frequently on Saturday to test Kellen Moore’s offense, which was terrible at receiving and blocking last year when Nick Sirianni and Brian Johnson ran the offense.
That is not the case.
“The offense was not taken into account,” Fangio said. “It was just time for us to put some stuff in, and (Saturday) we worked on it. We put it in before (Saturday’s) practice and worked on it and called it a couple of times … Kellen told me afterward it was good for them to see that. They need that.”
The Eagles’ defense needs this too if it is to coalesce under Fangio, and the DC believes he has the right personnel to win with the blitz.
“I think some (of the linebackers) have good blitzing skills,” he said. “It’s always hard to tell until you get into real games because in practice we’re supposed to back off when we approach the quarterback so we don’t finish, and finishing is the most important thing in the pass rush.”
“That’s why we fight for a lot of pass rush drills because that’s the only opportunity where we can finish and not have to worry about getting too close to the quarterback. So, yeah, but I think we have some guys that can do that.”
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