Eagles Young Defensive Stars Embracing Vic Fangio's 'Old School' Approach

Eagles' defensive tackles Jordan Davis and Jalen Carter have taken to Vic Fangio's no-nonsense approach.

Eagles NT Jordan Davis / John McMullen/SI Eagles

PHILADELPHIA - It's not exactly a secret that some Miami Dolphins defenders weren't enamored with Vic Fangio's no-nonsense coaching style last season.

Third-year Eagles' nose tackle Jordan Davis had a succinct description for Fangio's bedside manner when teaching after Thursday's OTA practice.

"No bull@#$%," the 350-pound Davis said. "There's no bull@#$% and I hope y'all can bleep that out. But it's really no BS with him, it's straight ball."

Davis, along with emerging second-year star Jalen Carter, linemates dating back to their days together at the University of Georgia, are the two foundational pieces Fangio is building his defense upon in Philadelphia. Both are very young -- Davis is 24 and Carter is 23 -- and not exactly in the demographic Fangio cultivated his teaching techniques with,

Yet, both seem to be ducks in the water with the 65-year-old Fangio's gruff approach.

"I love Vic. Old-school, man," Carter said of Fangio last week. "He’s fun to talk to. A good coach."

Carter also noted that not all of the Dolphins were put off by Fangio's ways.

"I heard a lot of good news about him because I was in Miami working out," said Carter. "So I had a couple of Miami players out there. I was talking to them, and they were saying a lot of good stuff."

Davis, meanwhile, confirmed the old-school approach and isn't exactly running from it.

"I'm sure you heard that all the time, he's old school so he don't give a damn," Davis said after practice. "... Some people like it for better or for worse. I played with all types of coaches from high school, college. I mean [Georgia coach] Kirby Smart is the worst of the worst, so not the worst of the worst but he's old school. [There's] a job to do. You do your job and if you don't do it, it's a miss."

Davis says it's about the details and getting it right with Fangio and his staff.

"So even from [defensive line] coach Clint [Hurtt] it's like detail oriented, he said. "If we mess up on a detail, we gotta go again. And it's not just saying like you're getting the extra reps, just doing it just to do it. You're doing it for improvement.

You're doing it to make sure that you get it down, you get it right. And if we get it right, you do it light, if it's wrong you do it long. So it's either one way to do it and that's just to do it correctly."

The thesis that perhaps the aging Fangio is not cut out to be teaching the modern player is being contradicted by two of the Eagles' youngest and most important defenders.

"He's expecting us to be on the field for as long as we can," Davis said. "... We just know that he wants us to be out there and I mean, if you're gonna be a player, you're gonna be a dude you want to be out there and you want to play so I want to be that dude so I want to play."

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