Inside Vic Fangio's Turn Toward Nakobe Dean As The Eagles' MLB

The Eagles' DC was trying to light a fire under the third-year LB and it worked.

Eagles linebacker Nakobe Dean at training camp / Ed Kracz/Eagles on SI

If Vic Fangio was trying to light a fire under Nakobe Dean, it’s mission accomplished with the Eagles’ third-year linebacker capturing the starting Mike linebacker position and the green dot for Friday night’s season-opener against the Green Bay Packers in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

That part was confirmed when the Eagles downgraded Devin White on the injury report and declared him out for the opener with an ankle injury. 

White signed a one-year deal for $3.5 million guaranteed in the offseason with potential incentives after five disappointing seasons in Tampa Bay and did not travel with the Eagles to Sao Paulo on Wednesday.

Whether White was ready to go or not, Dean was going to start against the Packers, according to multiple team sources, with Zack Baun set to handle the weakside spot.

The team’s other three LBs on the 53-man roster - Ben VanSumeren, Oren Burks, and rookie Jeremiah Trotter Jr. – are all expected to be active against Green Bay.

“Usually when you have battles going on and it's time to make a decision, the players make the decision for you, and everybody sees it,” Fangio said early in camp when discussing his philosophy on competitions. “It's rare that it's so tight that everybody is waiting for who the coaches pick. 

“It becomes obvious.”

Eagles DC Vic Fangio / John McMullen/Eagles on SI

To those paying attention, Dean over White became obvious in the end.

Dean missed most of last season with multiple foot injuries, the second of which required Lisfranc surgery. The former Georgia star was not fully cleared until minicamp and started slowly while ramping up this summer. 

By midway through training camp, Dean seemed to flip the switch and dominated at times as a run defender and blitzer with a physical style of play buoyed by a remade upper body he worked tirelessly on while working through the stages of being on a wheel-a-bout to crutches and finally a walking boot.

The former Butkus Award winner even improved in pass coverage, long thought to be a weakness, and proved to be a far more instinctive player than White.

Some became far too focused on the fact that Fangio started White and Baun for 15 of the Eagles’ 16 summer practices at LB quietly missing the fact that Dean was getting a bigger volume of overall first-team reps in the final week of summer, the demarcation line foreshadowing Fangio’s sea change.

White was participating in the early portions of practice open to the media on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday before the Eagles listed him as limited with an ankle injury on their first injury report on Tuesday afternoon. 

On Wednesday, the organization officially declared White out for the game and confirmed he would not be on the team’s Wednesday flight to Brazil.

Behind the scenes, though, it was already a fait accompli with Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer noting that “there were murmurs that the Eagles could trade Devin White before the cutdown” to 53 on social media.

The decision had already been made.

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