Eagles-Giants Film Review: Now *this* is a Vic Fangio defense

Not giving up a touchdown in two weeks feels pretty good. Last week was fun, but this week against the New York Giants was better. This was easily my favorite Philadelphia Eagles defensive film I’ve watched in a long time. Time to explain why!

Defense

I’ll get the obvious out of the way; the Giants suck. This Eagles’ defense will face greater challenges. But you can only play who is opposite you, and I’m hopeful the Eagles continue to play this aggressively, whoever they are facing. Just keep in mind that when I am talking about this game, you have to consider that the Giants are not very good. I still think we can learn a lot about the style of defense that the Eagles played, though. I just hope this style wasn’t a one-off.

After four weeks, I was finding this defense incredibly frustrating to watch. It did not look like a Fangio defense. There was so much awful cover 3 and nowhere near enough split-safety. This week felt very different. This was a Fangio defense. The route distribution and communication in the secondary was as good as I have seen in years. The pass rush got all the credit on Sunday, but the secondary gave them the time to get after the quarterback. This is an outstanding rep from Darius Slay on Malik Nabers. A few weeks ago, everyone was panicking about the pass rush, but opposing quarterbacks were just getting the ball out immediately. This week, the pass rush had time to win.

Cooper DeJean has had a fantastic first couple of starts. I expected him to look a little raw as he learns the nickel position but he’s been great. He makes several plays in a game where the athleticism stands out. This looked like a simple play, but you can see his great hustle, and he does a good job passing the route off rather than continuing to run with the receiver and getting back to the flat. Football is very complicated at times, but sometimes it’s important to have a bunch of young athletic defensive backs who can fly around the field. Rallying to the football quickly can prevent shorter gains from turning into explosive plays. DeJean prevents the first down, resulting in the Giants punting two plays later.

Fangio did not send a blitz (5 or more rushers) a single time the entire game. That is pretty insane, considering how much pressure the Eagles got! This was a clinic on using simulated and creeper pressures to get after the quarterback without sacrificing a defender in coverage. Rushing four allows you to play more split-safety coverages, too, even if you have to drop an EDGE into coverage. The Eagles got caught out once when Josh Sweat had to cover a wide receiver, but the Giants called the perfect play on that particular occasion. That will happen when you drop EDGE defenders. But there is no perfect defense and sometimes you will get beat. This is a Fangio classic called ‘Whip’ where he sends the weakside linebacker and drops the opposite EDGE defender. Jalen Carter does a fantastic job slanting and occupying the A-gap, allowing Dean to come through clean. Rushing four and getting a free rusher on 3rd down. It doesn’t get any better than that!

Oh baby. This is communication and route distribution at its finest. I will mention those words a lot in this piece, but they are the most important parts of Fangio’s defense. When the secondary does it well, there is nothing better than quarters coverage. Nakobe Dean has not been great in coverage this year, but he was fantastic in this game. A lot of Fangio’s concepts ask the outside cornerbacks to play one-on-one, as the deep safeties are responsible for poaching and carrying deep crossing routes. Fangio’s defense puts much more stress on the outside cornerbacks than people realize. People wrongly assume that the cornerbacks have help over the top from the safeties, but that isn’t always true. Darius Slay and Quinyon Mitchell were too good for the Giants’ receivers in this one. This includes Malik Nabers, who is awesome. The Eagles defensive backs will face tougher tests, especially this week when they face Tee Higgins and Jamar Chase, but they were fantastic this weekend.

I wrongly called this ‘Whip’ on the initial tweet. This one confused me because I couldn’t figure out what the safeties were playing. I watched them about 15 times and totally missed the fact that the Eagles dropped both EDGE defenders on this one! This is pretty much quarters with Dean rushing and both EDGE’s dropping. This was Nakobe Dean’s best game of his career and I’m not sure it was close. He was awesome. He was a fantastic pass rusher at Georgia and looked like he did in college this week. He wasn’t just winning unblocked. He was a proper pass rusher this week. I credited his hustle last week but also questioned whether he would be good enough to be a starting linebacker. It was only one game, but he looked like a top-quality starting linebacker this week. I was more impressed with him than anyone else this week.

Just look at Dean in coverage here. He’s lacked awareness when dropping all year, but he didn’t this week! He knew when receivers were running behind him and didn’t give up easy throws over the middle. This is outstanding coverage all around. It’s the same formula as before. The outside cornerbacks lock down the outside receivers and the safeties and linebackers do an excellent job distributing the routes. Say it with me: route distribution and communication.

Here’s some more good news. The Eagles’ run defense was excellent, even from a 4-man front! As you guys know, I’ve had issues with Fangio’s 4-man run fits going back several years. I rarely like them and prefer their run fits from a 5-man front. However, this week, we saw the Eagles play the run well with a 4-man front. That’s a potentially big development as it gives the Eagles more flexibility in coverage. Here’s a lovely rep that shows Jordan Davis and Jalen Carter fighting through a double team, allowing Nakobe Dean to stay clean. Dean has always been a great run defender when kept clean but struggles when guards get to the second level quickly. Again, the Eagles will face bigger tests than the Giants’ run game. But this was good to see. The Eagles slanted their defensive lineman less and played more gap-and-a-half fits on the defensive line, which was a positive. The spacing on the defensive line was more solid than it has been so far this year. Positive signs.

Remember the game a few weeks ago when the Eagles cornerbacks played about 10 yards off the receiver on every snap? Now, compare that to this! Darius Slay and Nakobe Dean close on the short route quickly on 3rd and short, forcing the incompletion. I just hope the Eagles keep the same mentality against better receivers and don’t play passively due to the fear of getting beat deep. It will happen occasionally, but you can’t play scared. The Eagles have two really good outside cornerbacks. They shouldn’t fear any receiving duo.

On another note, I haven’t posted any clips of Darius Slay in run defense, but he was fantastic! He made about two or three outstanding plays against the run, which was weird to see but really good to see! I’m wondering if Fangio has been getting on him for this because he was a lot more aggressive.

Another split-safety coverage, another sack. This time it’s quarter-quarter-half rather than quarters/cover 4, but the result is much the same. QQH means that you have two defenders playing quarter technique to the passing strength and a deep defender playing half technique opposite. This allows Slay to get a bit more physical and get his hands on the receiver in order to reroute him. There was so much split-safety coverage (either Cover 4, Cover 6 (QQH) or Cover 8 (HQQ) in this game! This is what I expected to see all year!

What else is there to say about Jalen Carter? When he is feeling it, he’s awesome. He’s still not as consistent week to week as the elites, but he’s as good as anyone when he feels it. The talent is absurd.

Nakobe. Dean. What a performance. This is a fantastic show of athleticism and another brilliant pass-rush rep from him. The coverage, once again, is so good. Just look at the outside corners here! Slay and Quinyon were outstanding, and Malik Nabers is a serious talent. Because of some slightly strange comments off the field at times, I still think that a lot of Eagles fans underrate Slay. He still moves very well and is playing at a high level right now.

This game was a lot of fun. The Eagles’ defense has really progressed in the past few weeks, and now it looks like a proper Fangio defense. The challenge now is playing similarly against a very good offense.

I’ll be flying from London to Cincinnati next weekend to watch the Birds, so I can watch the defense live! If you are going, make sure you come up and say hi!

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.