What’s changed the most since the Eagles and Packers met in Week 1? The top-ranked Eagles defense.
“I feel like we as a defense have come a long way,” linebacker Nakobe Dean said.
Nakobe Dean and Zack Baun watched film Wednesday from their Week 1 game vs. the Green Bay Packers. September was a long time ago. The game was played on a soccer field in a different hemisphere. It was the off-ball linebacker combination’s first start next to each other.
So before we get to some of the reasons why Dean said the film review made the duo feel “disgusted,” it’s worth mentioning that Sept. 6 was a preview of the improbable season Baun would go on to have, proving defensive coordinator Vic Fangio’s hunch to be right, that the Eagles didn’t sign a rotational edge rusher to a one-year deal — they had a real off-ball linebacker, one who later was named to the Pro Bowl.
Baun had a season-high 15 tackles, two of which were sacks, the second one sealing the first of 14 Eagles wins by thwarting plans of a desperation heave to the end zone from midfield. Dean, for his part, won a starting job out of training camp and took off.
But there were plenty of moments from that 34-29 Eagles win in São Paulo, Brazil, that made Dean and Baun wince.
“We were like, ‘What the [expletive] were we doing?’” Dean said. “But we also made some good plays.”
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The bad plays mostly were in the technique department, Dean said, which led to missed assignments and missed tackles. The Packers tallied 414 yards. They averaged 7.8 yards per rushing attempt. Jayden Reed had explosive plays running and catching. Josh Jacobs had one on the ground. Tucker Kraft had a 29-yard catch.
A lot has changed about both teams since Week 1, but perhaps no facet is more glaring than the Eagles defense, which became the top unit in the NFL.
The easy turning point for the Eagles was their Week 5 bye. They were well-traveled and beaten up during their first four weeks. It’s when a group of offensive linemen went to Nick Sirianni to urge the coach to commit to running the football with Saquon Barkley. The change there is easy to see in Barkley’s game logs and the way the 10-game winning streak played out. But that week also involved more than tweaking the offensive approach.
Fangio had four games of data showing a pretty below-average defense, which should have come as a surprise to no one, given how last season went.
The Eagles used that bye week to dive into a lot, including how they practiced tackling. Their missed tackles led to 92 extra Packers yards in Week 1. They missed another 16 tackles during their Week 4 embarrassment at Tampa Bay. Twice in their first four games they allowed 400-plus yards. Twice in their first four games they allowed a team to rush for at least 5 yards per carry. Jordan Love threw for 260 yards in the opener, and Baker Mayfield torched the Eagles for 347 in that 33-16 loss to the Bucs.
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The post-bye numbers are staggering, considering that start.
The Eagles became one of the better tackling teams. After allowing 400-plus yards twice in four weeks, they allowed only three more teams to eclipse the 300-yard mark in the remaining 13 games. After allowing 5-plus yards per carry twice in four weeks, they allowed an opponent to average 5 or more yards on the ground only twice in the following 13 games.
“I feel like we as a defense have come a long way,” Dean said. “The pride we take in everything as far as stopping the run, stopping the pass, our technique, block destruction, tackling, fundamentals, little things like that. We all have come far in every type of way.”
The Packers, fifth in the NFL in total offense, surely will test how far the Eagles have come “in every type of way,” Dean said, even without wide receiver Christian Watson, who’s injured.
“They have one of the top offenses in the league, a good running game, and a good quarterback,” Dean said. “Everything complements each other. They have guys at every position. It’s definitely going to be a test, but we’re just focusing on ourselves.”
Love has “a big arm,” Fangio said earlier this week. “He can throw it to all parts of the field with accuracy and touch. He’s got good movement in the pocket. He’s elusive. And he really fits their offense. That offense needs a guy that can throw it down the field. He can do that. They need a guy that can scramble a little bit and be elusive. He can do that. He’s a perfect fit for their offense.”
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Which makes Jacobs, 26, a perfect running back, too. The former Las Vegas Raiders back — and 2022 rushing champion — has thrived in his first season with the Packers, piling up 1,329 yards and 15 touchdowns on the ground. He’s fast and physical and runs behind a good offensive line.
“We’ve had good games and not so; we’ve had in between,” Fangio said of his team’s run defense. “We’ll be tested this week. These guys run it very, very well.”
In different ways, too.
“They do a variety of different things in the run game,” Baun said. “Usually, you look at an offense as a zone team or a gap-scheme team, and each one might have the other mixed in. But this team can do both and do both really well.”
So who has the advantage? Which team can claim to have the upper hand based on a matchup from four months ago that feels, as Dean said, like an entirely different season?
“On our home field ... in front of our fans, that’s an advantage to us,” Baun said. “And just the way we’ve been playing football as a team: very complementary of each other, us playing off the offense, offense playing off of us. I think we’re in a really good spot going into this game.”
The film shows it, too. Especially the games after Brazil and after the bye, when the Eagles found their identity and never relented.
What has changed the most since Brazil, according to Dean?
“The things we did best after that game were eliminate the plays that made us want to throw up,” he said. “We stopped them, but we kept making big plays.”
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