Eagles-Jaguars Film Review: Vic Fangio has been impressive

The Philadelphia Eagles’ offense was great to watch this week, but Vic Fangio’s defense against the Jacksonville Jaguars may have been even better. If Zack Baun’s agent is reading this one, please feel free to send this to Howie Roseman. It’s time to pay that man.

Defense

I don’t want to exaggerate, but I don’t think I’ve seen a better play from an Eagles linebacker in coverage for a long time. This is absurd. The Jaguars play call is perfect for this Eagles coverage, and there’s a big game for the corner route due to the vertical route taking away two deep Eagles defenders. This should be a completion, and it’s a well-thrown ball. Zack Baun reads Trevor Lawrence’s eyes whilst black pedaling and then makes a fantastic play on the ball. This would be a great play by a cornerback. This is a linebacker. I’ve said this since the start of the season: the Eagles need to pay Zack Baun. They can’t let this guy out of the building. He’s not just playing well. He’s playing like a superstar. He was fantastic in this game.

The Eagles’ defense was outstanding in the first half. They stopped the run on early downs and then played tight coverage on 3rd down. This is an excellent play by the young Eagles’ defensive backs. Quinyon Mitchell locks down the outside receiver, and Cooper DeJean does a good job of being physical at the line of scrimmage to disrupt the timing of the route. The Eagles’ coverage has been so much better over the past month. However, having 7 men in coverage means you need your 4 pass rushers to win. They did here! Josh Sweat makes another big play (I think it’s time to accept that he’s been excellent for the past month), and Milton Williams also has a great pass rush. This is good defense all around.

Here’s another Zack Baun play. It won’t be the last! The Jaguars use a receiver on jet motion to try and distract the linebackers and Baun takes one false step before reading this one perfectly. He avoids the guard and makes a great tackle at the line of scrimmage. I can’t quite believe how much better the Eagles’ run defense has been the past few weeks since the Eagles’ bye week. I expected the Eagles to use more 5-man fronts in order to stop the run, but they haven’t needed to. They have been able to do it with 4-man fronts because the spacing is much better, and they have stopped slanting their defensive lineman. Other Eagles’ defensive backs, such as Quinyon and Cooper DeJean, have also stepped up to help against the run. The Eagles’ run defense is outstanding currently.

Guess who? Zack Baun. There’s nothing special about this play, but I wanted to mention it anyway. Within one half of football, Baun has covered a receiver down the field, made multiple plays in the run game, and easily covered a running back in the flat. He is so athletic. I’ve got nothing else to say about him. Pay. The. Man.

I knew how good Baun was when watching live. I somehow missed Jalen Carter being totally dominant. He had a fantastic game that I somehow missed. Carter was double-teamed frequently and still ended up getting pressured often. In addition to this, Carter blew up multiple running plays. Just look at this play. How many defensive tackles do you see moving like this? He’s a total freak. I made some pretty bold statements about Jalen Carter in the off-season (such as calling him a future defensive player of the year candidate’ and I still feel the same way. I said in the tweet that he is going to be a superstar. He might already be one. I think the national media will talk about Carter much more by the end of this season. I haven’t really spoken about the other Eagles’ defensive tackles much lately, but I think all of them are fine. Jordan Davis has been fine as an early down run stuffer and nothing else. Milton Williams and Moro Ojomo are both playing well. But no one stands out like Carter does. He’s on a different level.

I am so excited about the future of this Eagles’ secondary. Being a rookie cornerback is not easy, but if you watched Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean, you would think it was. Quiyon is yet to have a bad game. DeJean has stepped into the starting line despite not having a full training camp and already looks fantastic in the slot. He didn’t make many splash plays because he wasn’t targeted much, but I think this was Quinyon’s best game of the year. He made so many excellent plays in coverage. The biggest concern about DeJean pre-draft was his hip fluidity. It looks pretty good here! I think the slot cornerback is a fantastic position for him because he is making a difference in the run game and can still cover receivers like this. This is a great rep. He flips his hips well and times his hit perfectly. The click-and-close speed is outstanding, too. It’s still early on, but it looks like the Eagles hit on their first two draft picks this year.

Am I dreaming? Did two Philadelphia Eagles’ linebackers just make an incredible play that led to an interception? Is this real life? Zach Baun wasn’t the only linebacker who played well in this game. Naboke Dean was fantastic too! Dean obviously had his moment at the end of the game but I think he was good throughout the game. He’s having a great 2nd year and it’s the first time he’s had a long run as a starter without an injury.

One of the issues with Fangio’s defense is the two deep safeties. This creates a light box and teams can have success running the football. One way to stop this is to have one of your safeties come downhill very quickly, exactly as Reed Blanekship does here! Blankenship is excellent at this. Nobody talks about Blankenship, but he’s had another good season. He’s a good starter who does his job well and rarely screws up. I thought he deserved a little mention here!

The Eagles ran quite a lot of Cover 6 (quarter-quarter-half), where there are two deep defenders to the side of the passing strength (the side with more receivers) and one deep defender to the opposite side. This is hard to predict because it looks like standard quarters coverage pre-snap. The reason I liked Cover 6 in this game is that it allowed Quinyon Mitchell to press at the line of scrimmage because he doesn’t have deep responsibility. Quinyon didn’t play a lot of press coverage in college, so I was interested in seeing this. It turns out he’s very good in press, too! Is there anything the rookie cornerback can’t do?

I am certain that Vic Fangio was completely fuming at the end of this game. He had rushed 4 all game, but on the last drive, he routinely sent 5. I am pretty sure he was furious with how this game turned out and that the Eagles hadn’t already won. It was quite funny to see. The Eagles had to play without Darius Slay this week, and Isaiah Rodgers stepped up and played well. He wasn’t perfect, and I thought he was too passive at times, but he had a strong game overall. A lot of teams struggle with depth at cornerback, so it’s very reassuring to see the Eagle’s 4th cornerback look good.

I’ve got a lot to say about C.J. Gardner-Johnson. I think every player in the back 7 has been good the past few weeks, except for CJGJ. He’s having a poor season, but this was his worst game of the season. CJGJ has never been a great run defender and has missed many tackles this year. However, the whole point of having CJGJ as a safety is that he can play man coverage in the slot as a former cornerback. However, in this game, he was beaten badly at least 3 times by a pretty average Jaguars receiving group. Look how badly he is beaten on this play. The receiver is wide open. This Jaguars receiver is Austin Trammell, a former undrafted free agent who has played for 3 teams in 4 years and has 8 career catches. This was the longest catch of his career. I’m concerned about CJGJ. If this happens again, the Eagles need to consider starting Sydney Brown.

I couldn’t end with any other play. There’s nothing fancy about this play; it’s just a 50/50 ball that Trevor Lawrence throws up for grabs, and Naboke Dean makes an outstanding play. I could not be happier for Dean. He’s played well this year and deserved this moment. The Eagles have two good starting linebackers. What’s going on?!

This was another excellent performance from the Eagles’ defense. I complained a lot about Fangio in the first few weeks of the season, but he has been impressed since the bye week. I’m enjoying watching this Eagles’ defense a lot.

Thank you for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to comment below and ask any questions. If you enjoyed this piece, you can find more of my work and podcast here.