Breaking down the Eagles’ defensive struggles since Jonathan Gannon’s clumsy departure

Darius Slay was in disbelief.

The Eagles cornerback had just finished singing the praises of his former defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon when a reporter mentioned that some hold Gannon responsible for the Eagles’ Super Bowl loss in February.

“People blame him for the loss of the Super Bowl?” Slay said. “I don’t know why. I love the Eagles fans, but one thing about Eagles fans is they’re always going to find somebody to blame. Just because it was the last [field goal] of the Super Bowl, of course they’re going to say him. It was far from JG’s fault.”

Now 10 months removed from the defensive collapse against the Kansas City Chiefs that capped off Gannon’s polarizing two-year tenure with the Eagles, the coach is set to return to Lincoln Financial Field as head coach of the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday. The sentiment from Eagles players when discussing their former coach is notably different from the discussion outside of the locker room.

“I miss him,” Eagles edge rusher Josh Sweat said. “He’s a good dude. We all knew he was a guy you’d put it all on the line for. As a player, you should always be playing for you, but he just enhanced it a lot more.

“He’s super energetic all the time, so you know it’s not fake. And if it is, he’s doing a good-ass job. ... Even when [stuff] was going wrong and people were on him. Even he had a time where it was like, ‘Can he be the D-coordinator?’ and stuff like that. Even after that, he was still real. He was the same dude.”

Things have been far from stable for the Eagles defense since Gannon’s clumsy departure in February, when an impermissible call with Arizona general manager Monti Ossenfort eventually led to the Cardinals and Eagles settling a tampering investigation months later.

Between major personnel losses, a change in scheme, and another shakeup to the coaching staff earlier this month, the regression from the group is clear. The Eagles rank 23rd in defensive DVOA, 30th on third-down conversions against, and were tied for 14th in sacks going into Week 16. Last year, they were third in DVOA, 14th on third down, and finished the season No. 1 in sacks with 70, third-most in NFL history.

The 38-35 loss to the Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII validated concerns about Gannon’s track record against the best offenses in the NFL, but the same problems have plagued the group for most of the second half of this season.

Perhaps that’s life in the NFL.

“The first thing is to have expectations of what your defense should look like in a dominant form in 2023,” CBS and NFL Network producer Ben Fennel told The Inquirer. “It has evolved drastically over the last 10 years. I don’t know what a dominant defense is anymore. There really is no more Legions of Booms or 2000s Ravens or even those mid-2000s Patriots teams ... I don’t see that anymore. I think we’re hanging onto an expectation.”

» READ MORE: How the Eagles’ third-down defense was taken away from Sean Desai before his demotion

James Bradberry had one of the best years of his career in 2022 playing in Gannon’s zone-heavy scheme.

The 30-year-old cornerback was named second-team All-Pro for the first time in his career after picking off three passes and recording 17 pass breakups and making up one half of an elite cornerback duo along with Slay.

While the 2023 season has been more turbulent for Bradberry, who has one interception and 12 PBUs so far, he said the system Gannon ran wasn’t what he missed most about the year prior.

“We were blowing people out, that’s why you miss that year,” Bradberry said. “At the end of the day, it’s on the players to run that scheme. We just haven’t done what we needed to this year to perfect that scheme.”

To Bradberry’s point, the personnel on the Eagles’ defense has changed significantly, both in terms of Week 1 starters and games lost to injury since then. The team lost five defensive starters and a handful of key contributors to free agency, most notably watching defensive tackle Javon Hargrave, safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson, and linebacker T.J. Edwards sign elsewhere in the spring.

They’ve been able to compensate for some of the losses with draft picks like Jalen Carter and Sydney Brown, but have struggled to get similarly productive play from others. They’ve had season-long rotations with several different players at linebacker, safety, and nickel cornerback as well.

» READ MORE: In (partial) defense of Jonathan Gannon

Through 15 games, the Eagles have had 16 players log at least 30 coverage snaps in the defense. They had just 11 players do so all of last season and had all of their Week 1 starters available for the Super Bowl in February.

“In this era of the NFL, you need continuity,” Fennell said. “You need guys that know how to work together and communicate together and have experience together. ... Right down the middle of the defense, it’s been a swirling of the drain of different people trying to get experience. This is what it’s looked like in 2023, it’s been dysfunctional, it’s been inconsistent. That’s what you get with this youth movement, and that’s this rubber-band back this league gives you when you lose your defensive coordinator because they had such a good year and you lose these free agents.”

The turnover in personnel is arguably the biggest cause for regression from the group. Desai’s system this year has plenty of carryover from his predecessor with a heavy emphasis on limiting explosive plays with two-high coverages and allowing the defensive front to be aggressive getting upfield to rush the passer even at the expense of run defense.

One major difference is the Eagles’ ability to match up in quarters coverage or man-to-man on third downs, something Gannon had a tendency to do and something Patricia has relied on since taking over two games ago. The Eagles ranked 14th in third-down defense last season compared to 30th this year and were dead last in the metric at the time Matt Patricia took over.

“Man-to-man is really tough to play in today’s NFL,” Fennell said. “Most of the league is playing the same type of quarters, two-high scheme because man coverage is really tough on defenders these days. So, it’s like, ‘Let’s prevent explosives, let’s get after the quarterback and maybe try to confuse a quarterback here and there with different looks and disguises and things.’

“A lot of the NFL has gotten very vanilla over the last four or five years. Which puts a lot more pressure on the quality of the players in that scheme. Because if the scheme is vanilla, the players have to perform.”

Outside of replacing Hargrave for Carter, the Eagles’ pass rush returned each of its major contributors from last season but hasn’t gotten the same production.

The Eagles’ 70 sacks in 2022 were the third most in NFL history and the highest total in the league, leaving them due for some regression. Still, this year they entered Week 16 tied for 14th in sacks and are 12th in pressure rate.

» READ MORE: The Eagles’ pass rush isn’t recording sacks, but Matt Patricia says it’s still making an impact

Sweat, who has seven sacks so far this season after finishing last year with 15, said the numbers don’t reveal the full picture. The edge rusher hasn’t recorded more than three pressures since Week 11, according to Pro Football Focus, but his 63 total pressures this year is still 12 higher than he had all of last season.

“I’ve rushed better this year than I ever have in my career,” Sweat told The Inquirer. “I’ve got way more hits and pressures, probably combined total than in my entire career this year. I’ve won more, I’ve been way more active, but the numbers just doesn’t hit. ... Everything has to go right for a sack. I can’t just win, which I’ve been doing. I can’t just win, it has to be right.

“It doesn’t always work out, but I know this is my best rush year. If I was out there getting my [butt] whupped, that’s a different story, but it ain’t like that. I’m around the quarterback more than I ever have been.”

For the second time since Gannon’s departure 10 months ago, the Eagles are adjusting to a new defensive play-caller.

Patricia’s appointment as the de facto defensive coordinator brought a handful of notable changes to simplify things for the secondary and free up the pass rush with mixed results. The Eagles’ defensive performances, albeit against middling offenses, has been better the last two weeks, but the real tests will come in the postseason.

Slay said Patricia’s simplification for the secondary — a move to more man coverage and the match zone coverages they played under Gannon — has helped guys play with more freedom.

“He’s making calls easier for guys to line up, play fast, and play smart,” Slay said. “You can see it out on the field, guys are more comfortable getting their feet in the ground and ready to go.”

Especially with the churn of coaches brought on by Gannon’s departure and the lack of player continuity, the simplified approach going into the coach’s return to the Linc may be the only way to get by.

“This team just hasn’t played together [on defense,]” Fennell said. “And when they have, there’s been a rotation of injuries and different presences and different voices in the huddle, so it probably feels very complicated.”