Eagles' Defensive Problems Seem Awfully Familiar

There isn't a defensive coordinator in the NFL more well-respected than Vic Fangio and perhaps the veteran coach's reputation is masking problems with a scheme ending the tail end of its life cycle.

Philadelphia Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio / Bill Streicher-Imagn Images

PHILADELPHIA - There are never any excuses in the NFL but the Eagles’ offense had some strong explanations for a poor performance during a 33-16 loss at Tampa Bay, most notably the absences of All-Pros A.J. Brown and Lane Johnson, as well as Pro Bowl-level receiver DeVonta Smith.

The defense?

Vic Fangio’s unit just played poorly in the oppressive heat in Florida, playing consistently soft in coverage and then missing 12 to 16 tackles depending on if you like TruMedia, Pro Football Focus, or Next Gen Stats.

According to long-time national football writer Doug Farrar the Eagles’ defense has had none of its cornerbacks on the field in press coverage on 88% of their defensive snaps, by far the NFL’s highest rate.

If it seems like the Eagles have been here before in the Nick Sirianni you’d be right. Early in Sirianni’s first year, similar complaints over soft coverage were leveled at then-first-year defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon, something Sirianni wanted tweaked.

The changes were made and the Eagles finished strongly on defense considering the talent on hand and when players like Haason Reddick and C.J. Gardner-Johnson were added for the 2022 season, the defense took off as one of the best in football.

For those who don’t know Gannon ran a Fangio-style scheme at Sirianni’s behest with the top goal being to limit explosive plays, something that’s supposed to be helped by the so-called plus-one in coverage as much as possible.

This is the fourth consecutive year that the Eagles have played the Fangio style but the first with the man himself. It is also Sirianni’s first time as a head coach with a veteran DC after Gannon and Sean Desai, who was only a DC for one season in Chicago before not even making one season in Philadelphia. 

Defensive football in the NFL tends to be cyclical with one leader having success before others play copycat and every scheme has a shelf life whether it’s Tony Dungy’s Cover-2, Pete Carroll’s Cover-3 or Mike Zimmer’s double-mug looks. 

Fangio’s scheme is about showing the same shell-coverage look as much as possible before spinning off into a host of mostly zone coverages to make the opposing quarterback decipher information post-snap.

When Fangio first started running his system, he defaulted to quarters coverage and when others began to unfurl their interpretations of it, Fangio evolved into more Cover-3.

With the Eagles, Fangio has been a Cover-8 guy more often than not, meaning Cover-2 on one side of the formation and quarters coverage on the other.

As the sample size has grown the defense no longer seems to be confusing veteran QBs and the Bucs came in with a game plan where Baker Mayfield took the easy yardage with quick throws. Perhaps, if the Eagles’ defenders tackled satisfactorily, the optics would have been better on Sunday.

Instead, Sirianni was getting questions about his role in the defensive game-planning as an offensive-minded head coach, the same queries he had gotten in the early days of Gannon’s tenure and throughout the tortured Desai/Matt Patricia experiment last season.

“I obviously hired Vic to do a job, and he's done a good job being a defensive coordinator in this league for a very long time,” Sirianni said. “I think the game plan, whenever you play like we did yesterday, you're going to look first and foremost and say, ‘Could we have put these buys in better positions?’ If the answer is yes, you take those notes. If the answer is, ‘Hey, we had them in good positions, and they didn't succeed,’ that's noted as well. I think any time you play like that, there is a little bit of yes to both.

“So the question you're asking me, how do I feel like the game plan was yesterday. Well, obviously I don't feel good about the game plan yesterday because we didn't play good. And we didn't coach good. And that's why we lost.

“That's where I am with that.”

Eagles on SI followed up with Sirianni noting the difference in dealing with young DCs like Gannon and Desai vs. a potential future Hall of Fame DC who may need to be steered in a different direction.

“That's my job as the head coach. Again, the product that's on the field is a direct reflection of me, and I know Vic feels that way about the defense,” Sirianni said. “But I still, as the head coach, yeah, if something is on my mind, I'm going to tell Vic about it. You know, obviously you guys spend time around me on here, but I'm not real shy about telling people how I feel about different things. Because at the end of the day, all I care about is us winning.”

The time has come to be not shy.

Fans of Fangio are so devoted to his scheme you’ll hear arguments that the solutions are built into it.

To that, you can now point to four different versions of the defense in Philadelphia under three different minds and they all suffered from some of the same problems.

If you check the expiration date on the Fangio scheme maybe it's not ready to be pulled from the shelves.

However, It's Sirianni's job "to face" it in supermarket parlance and make it more it's more enticing to the eye.

“That would be malpractice on my part if I was feeling something about the defense, Jonathan Gannon, Vic Fangio, you name the coordinator, if I didn't say anything about what I feel,” Sirianni said. “So, again, you have visions of things of how you see it in different scenarios. But we watch that tape together. We sat in there today, watched the entire tape together, went through all of it. Talked about what the issue was for each play that we failed on, what the answer, what the solution [is]. We discussed different things, players, personnel, past experiences of what has worked against those different things.

“So that's an organic conversation. That's, like we talked about with the offense, everybody is involved in that. Not just Vic, not just me, not just Vic and I, but the entire defense”.

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