Meet the Eagles’ coordinators: Takeaways from Vic Fangio and Kellen Moore’s introductory news conferences

The Eagles’ first spring practices of the offseason are just a few weeks away, meaning the changes implemented by new coordinators Vic Fangio and Kellen Moore will soon come into focus.

The two on Thursday spoke with reporters for the first time since joining the coaching staff earlier this offseason, with defensive coordinator Fangio addressing his decision to leave the Miami Dolphins and Moore explaining the process of merging a new offense with the old.

Here are some major takeaways from the coordinators’ news conferences.

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Fangio has memories of commuting to Veterans Stadium four decades ago as a defensive assistant for the USFL’s Philadelphia Stars. He would get lunch at the Philadium, at 17th & Packer, and closely followed the Phillies, who he said Thursday are “still playing good.”

Fangio, 65, who is from Dunmore, next door to Scranton, said returning to the area that much of his family still calls home was a major factor in leaving the Dolphins for the Eagles.

Given the choice, the veteran coach said this would be his final stop.

“I thought it would be cool to hopefully end it here,” Fangio said. “So, 40 years later, here I am.”

“My kids live two hours south of here,” Fangio added. “My mother, who’s 97, lives two hours north of here. So there’s a lot of family considerations.

“I was a big Philly fan growing up in all sports, so it was a thrill for me to go to work every day at Veterans Stadium 40 years ago because I used to go to games all the time, and now it’s going to be a thrill to come back 40 years later and hopefully finish it out here.”

This was Fangio’s first time speaking publicly since Miami announced that the two sides “mutually agreed to part ways” in late January. He joined the Dolphins’ staff last offseason after spending the 2023 playoffs in an advisory role on the Eagles’ coaching staff helping the offense.

Fangio said it was a “fair assumption” to say he would have joined the Eagles staff last offseason had the timing worked out differently.

Former Eagles defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon left the Eagles’ staff for his current role as the head coach of the Arizona Cardinals a few days after Super Bowl LVII, after Fangio had already agreed to join the Dolphins’ staff.

A few months after Gannon’s departure, the NFL concluded that Arizona made impermissible contact with Gannon in January shortly after the NFC championship game.

Fangio, whom the Eagles hired three days after his Miami departure, also addressed the notion that he butted heads with Dolphins players during his season there. Player agent Drew Rosenhaus, who represents 11 players on the Dolphins’ 2023-24 roster, told local Miami television station WSVN that Fangio was a polarizing figure among the players.

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“I didn’t see that at all,” Fangio said. “Anything we do, whether there, here, or anywhere else, is what we think is the best for the team and best for the defense specifically to stop somebody. And wherever that falls, that’s where it falls.”

The Eagles’ new offensive coordinator is in the process of creating a new language.

Moore is tasked with reversing course for a group that regressed last season, but just how much latitude he’ll be granted to change coach Nick Sirianni’s existing scheme remains to be seen.

On Thursday, Moore alluded to the offense’s past success when discussing how different things could look with him calling plays.

“Our real focus here as we’ve gone through this process is, you know, we have a lot of good going on,” Moore said. “We can’t lose the good and the reps that Jalen [Hurts] and AJ [Brown] have developed and Dallas [Goedert] has developed and this offensive line that we’ve developed. How can we build off of those things and really connect the whole thing?”

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Moore, 35, who spent last season as the Los Angeles Chargers’ offensive coordinator after spending the previous five on the Dallas Cowboys’ staff, said the biggest challenge in merging two schemes is sorting out the terminology without eventual confusion.

He said that some of the Eagles’ parlance will stay the same but that others will come from each of his previous stops.

“It’s a combination of things that we can build off of,” Moore said. “If everyone understands a play and it makes sense, then let’s keep things in place. It’s not that complicated.

“We will continue to evolve a system to make sure the language ties together and make sure the communication can be clean, whether it comes from Philadelphia, Los Angeles, or somewhere in between, we’re building that as we go.”

As a former quarterback, Moore said he emphasizes a “clean operation” as a play-caller both during the week and on game days, which ties into the need to simplify terminology.

When asked whether it would be a complicated process to maintain some of the Eagles’ existing calls with what he has used, Moore said it’s something he has done before.

“A lot of us have been exposed to this,” Moore said. “I think the biggest thing is just making sure the language is just connected. When I was in Dallas, every single year we went through this process, it was the same process. …

“Some of this language will fall into 2023 Philly, some of it will fall into Dallas or L.A., some of it will ultimately come from, ‘Hey we just want to clean this whole thing up, we’re just going to create a new family of words association.’”

Fangio doesn’t believe that players have changed much in the last four decades.

As the author of the en vogue system so many of his peers have borrowed from over the last few seasons, he said the conditions around players have shifted more than the individuals themselves during his time coaching professional football.

“People aren’t expecting as much out of players as we used to expect,” Fangio said. “And these players will work and give you everything they got within reason. …

“You hear it in the NBA: load management. And I talk to coaches in other sports and it drives them crazy. The players are willing to work, I’ve never had an issue with that, and they’re still willing to work, but we, as the so-called adults in the room, need to push them.”

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Fangio’s philosophy clashes with the Eagles’ approach the last few seasons to some degree. Under Sirianni, the team has typically favored shorter, more intense practices during training camp often separated by days off and has gone with fewer padded practices during the season to keep players fresh.

“You have to make do with what you got,” Fangio said of that thinking. “But I’ll always push for more.”

The Eagles are practicing more this spring than they have the past few offseasons. They have seven OTA practices scheduled, starting later this month, and will also hold a mandatory minicamp next month for the first time since Sirianni took over.

When asked whether he advocated for a busier offseason program before joining the Eagles’ staff, Fangio deferred to Sirianni, saying, “I’ll let Nick answer that for you.”

Although he wasn’t running the Eagles’ defense last season, Fangio offered his take on what went wrong for the group during the team’s late-season collapse.

The Eagles ranked 30th in points allowed and 31st in third-down conversion percentage last year, leading to defensive coordinator Sean Desai, a former Chicago Bears assistant coach under Fangio, getting stripped of play-calling duties in favor of senior defensive assistant Matt Patricia late in the regular season.

Neither coach solved what ailed the Eagles’ defense, which faced a litany of injuries in the secondary and at linebacker for most of the season.

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“They weren’t playing good, they had injuries, so there was a lot of moving parts,” Fangio said. “ … When things aren’t going good, you need to go back to basics. I’ll tell the players early in camp that if we’re struggling, don’t expect me to magically scheme our way out of it during a game.

“We’re going back to basics and we’re going to call the things that we’ve been practicing since Day 1 and we’re going to fight our way out of it. If you don’t have that foundation and you’re always grabbing for the perfect call, it’ll be OK for a little bit, but eventually you’re going to get gashed.”

Special teams coordinator Michael Clay, the only incumbent coordinator from last year’s staff, has spent his offseason studying the NFL’s new kickoff format, borrowed from the XFL.

The new format incentivizes returns, with most players on each side lining up within five yards of each other and giving returners more space to pick up speed.

“You really don’t know what to expect,” Clay said. “No one really has even seen it. Even from an XFL aspect, there’s still a lot of nuances from the XFL rules to what we’re trying to get done in the NFL.”

The Eagles have added several players with experience returning kicks, both through the draft and signing free agents. Rookies Cooper DeJean, Will Shipley, and Ainias Smith all returned kicks in college, and wide receiver Parris Campbell and cornerback Isaiah Rodgers have done so in the NFL.

Clay said there’s some uncertainty on what style returner will be most effective with the new rule but acknowledged the added options to go along with Britain Covey, who has been the team’s primary punt returner the last two seasons.

“Covey is a great option to have as a punt returner,” Clay said. “We brought in some guys that have some punt-return abilities. As we move forward, competition usually breeds greatness, so having other guys out there … it allows them to get some film and get some feel.”