Vic Fangio might just be the key to this whole thing.
You look back at last year’s Eagles defense and compare them to this year’s.
Obviously a few things that automatically stand out are going to be personnel differences.
Zack Baun is great.
He’s a great story of selflessness, resilience, and how progress isn’t always linear.
He’s now one of the 5 finalists for the Defensive Player of the Year.
Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean are great.
They’re both finalists for the Defensive Rookie of the Year.
They are great because this Eagles defense, as a collective unit, is great.
And this collective unit is great because Vic Fangio has unlocked that greatness.
That’s obviously the biggest difference from last year’s Eagles defense to this year.
And not just any ordinary great defensive mind in football.
He was a defensive assistant with the Philadelphia Stars in 1984.
The Stars won the USFL Championship that year.
He was a defensive consultant with the Eagles in 2022.
The Eagles won the NFC Championship, and then lost to the Chiefs in the Super Bowl.
The Eagles suffered one of the most historic collapses in NFL history last season.
So what did he go out and do this past offseason?
He hired Vic Fangio to be the new DC.
He signed Saquon Barkley and Zack Baun in free agency.
He drafted Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean.
I’m sure I’ve said plenty of things I regret about Howie Roseman right now.
But I’ll never utter a bad word about this man for the rest of my days.
