‘Kill blocks and tackle’: How the Eagles’ Vic Fangio became one of the NFL’s most copied coaches, but stayed ahead of the curve

The Eagles’ matchup against the Rams this Sunday is what Brandon Staley calls an “iPad game.”

It’s another meeting between Vic Fangio and Sean McVay, two of the most influential coaches in the NFL over the last five years and two men whose previous matchups have had ripple effects that helped shape championships, coaching hires, and much more.

For Staley, it’s a meeting between two of his former bosses. The San Francisco 49ers assistant head coach who spent time on Fangio’s staff between 2017-19 and McVay’s in 2020 knows plenty about the “classified” philosophies each coach takes into this Sunday’s divisional-round matchup at Lincoln Financial Field. So, just before kickoff he’ll sit down, tablet in hand, eager to see how his former colleagues try to outsmart each other.

“It’s going to be a great matchup for the NFL,” Staley told The Inquirer. “I’ll have the iPad for sure. It’s definitely going to be an iPad game. It’s going to be a game where you watch it live on TV and then, the next morning, you watch the offensive and defensive side to make sure you confirm what you saw.”

Staley likely won’t be alone in his plan to study the game within the game between Fangio as Eagles defensive coordinator and McVay calling plays at the helm for the Rams, which helps explain how each coach has forged the impression they have across the NFL’s coaching circuit in the first place. From McVay’s lengthy coaching tree to the recent shift by more than a dozen of the league’s defensive play-callers to adopt the broad strokes of Fangio’s scheme, each coach’s imprint on the NFL is apparent.

That imprint led to Fangio’s principles preceding him on the Eagles’ coaching staff by a few years. Former Eagles defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon didn’t work with Fangio, but had a similar approach in his two years calling the team’s defense and Sean Desai, Gannon’s replacement in 2023, was an assistant under Fangio along with Staley in Chicago.

» READ MORE: Three cheers for Vic Fangio, the oldie but goodie in charge of a great Eagles defense

Still, bringing the original author onto Eagles coach Nick Sirianni’s staff has been transformative for the team’s defense this season. The group finished the regular season No. 1 in yards allowed and held the Green Bay Packers to a season-low 10 points in a wild-card round win last Sunday.

When asked how Fangio is able to stay ahead of the curve even as, by Staley’s estimation, 75% of the league has implemented parts of his scheme, his former assistant said Fangio’s complexity is rooted in the fundamentals.

“The big thing with Vic is he’s going to get a group that knows how to kill blocks and tackle,” Staley said. “That’s really important to him, making sure they’re in good position to be fundamentally sound. He’s not overly scheme-y as a coach. I think that’s why his defenses are so consistent, he has enough mixture to keep an offense off-balance but his defenses are going to be fundamentally sound and it’s going to be very hard to get explosive plays that offenses feast off of because his guys are always going to be in good position, they’re going to disguise and they’re going to make you go the long road.”

When Tanner McKee watches the Eagles secondary swarm opposing receivers and force incompletions, there’s a mixture of familiarity and vindication.

Serving as the scout-team quarterback most days in practice, it’s likely the second-year signal caller out of Stanford has played more downs against the Eagles defense than anyone else since Fangio’s arrival.

The coach’s tendency to keep things uniform pre-snap to disguise coverages and the allowance he gives his players to adjust to different route concepts post-snap can be tough on a quarterback, McKee explains. The sometimes-futile nature of a scout team quarterback certainly doesn’t help, either.

“I obviously feel that in practice,” McKee said. “I think something’s open, I’ll be like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to try to rip this’ and then I’m like, ‘Oh crap, they were giving me that because this guy was gonna have his back.’”

» READ MORE: Truths from a Phillies diehard: Vic Fangio, the grizzly Eagles DC and baseball traditionalist, plays it straight

There have been more than a few moments this season of deja vu for McKee, who said he considers himself all the better for working against a group that allowed the fewest net yards per pass attempt in the regular season and picked off Packers quarterback Jordan Love three times last week.

While Fangio typically employs a heavy amount of zone coverages, the nature of those calls can sometimes differ from other coaches across the league. Instead of having players drop to a specific area, they either have “matching” assignments for each receiver or the permission to be reactive to how things unfold.

“He does a really good job of getting his guys to understand the scheme as a whole,” McKee said. “Not just saying, ‘Hey, you’re going to be the flat defender, this is what you’re going to do’ and kind of check off a box if you’re in the flat. No, you’re in the flat, but if you see a two-levels concept, make sure you turn your hips and try to either mess with the quarterback or take the higher angle. I think he does a really good job of emphasizing the details and things like that.”

» READ MORE: Zack Baun and the Eagles defense save the day

Eagles linebacker Zack Baun, who was named first-team All-Pro in his first year under Fangio after switching to a new position in the summer, added, “His Cover 3 isn’t like any other Cover 3. He really allows players to be, we call it ‘farmy’ in the middle of the field. Like, you’re not just hovering over one guy, if a motion is supposed to take you out and that’s your guy, you kind of have leverage to steal something in the middle of the field. It’s not flashy ... it’s not exotic, but I think he makes it difficult on quarterbacks because he’s able to morph and change it every week.”

Baun got the first postseason interception of his career against Green Bay by being “farmy” in the middle of the field. After identifying the Packers intention to draw him toward an underneath route to create space in the intermediate middle of the field, Baun worked to “steal” back the deep dig developing behind him.

It was a play that required him to venture from his original assignment within the framework of Fangio’s call and one the 28-year-old conceded he probably wouldn’t have been empowered to pursue in the early portion of the season for lack of trust from his coach.

“I think with Vic, you’ve got to earn that type of freedom,” Baun said after the game. “It’s a ‘if you take it, you [better] make it’ type of play. I trusted it and went and got it.”

Baun’s role in the Eagles defense, sometimes serving as an extra edge defender to bolster the defensive line and more often playing as an off-ball linebacker, evokes memories of the game plan that helped popularize Fangio’s system five years ago.

» READ MORE: How the inquisitive Nolan Smith grew to become the Eagles’ answer at edge rusher

For most, the inflection point between McVay and Fangio traces back to 2018, when Fangio’s Bears used a six-man front to combat the dominant run and play-action game McVay had crafted that season. Two weeks after the Rams put up 54 points against the Kansas City Chiefs, Fangio held the group to just six while laying the blueprint former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick used against the Rams to win Super Bowl LIII, 13-3.

“They were rolling,” Staley said. “... Nobody had slowed them down the whole season. Really for his first season and a half, he had been running up and down the field against everybody. I think we caught him at the right time, it was the right night, and our group in Chicago was really special.

“Structurally, we kind of ambushed them that night and had some things ready for them,” he added. “We had a lot of tape on them and we played them later on in the season. I think that was an advantage.”

What stemmed from then was a transition across the league away from the single-high defenses popularized by the Seattle Seahawks in the early 2010s back toward the two deep safeties Fangio employed while still finding ways to stuff the run against coaches like McVay and 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan.

Staley, who was an outside linebackers coach on Fangio’s staff in Chicago and then with the Denver Broncos before taking a defensive coordinator job with the Rams in 2019, said the last five seasons have seen about 3/4ths of the league adopt parts of the scheme they ran back then.

“Guys like Sean [McVay] and Kyle, they really put you in conflict with the marriage of the run and the pass game,” Staley said. “I think the amount of motion that has entered the league because of them, it has totally changed the way the game is played from a defensive perspective. ... Since Chicago in 2018, there’s been an explosion.”

After struggling against Fangio’s system, McVay hired Staley as the Rams defensive coordinator before the 2020 season. It’s worth noting, in an article published by ESPN in 2019, McVay, Shanahan, and Packers coach Matt LaFleur each named Fangio as the most difficult defensive coach in the NFL to go against.

Fangio was similarly complimentary about McVay earlier this week.

“He’s got a great offense that he has great command of,” Fangio said Tuesday. “And he’s a really good play-caller during the game. He can change gears on you at a moment’s notice, and he’s one of the top play-callers in the league for sure, without a doubt.”

And while the most recent meeting between Fangio and McVay ended in a 37-20 Eagles win over the Rams in Week 12, Staley said the lesser-discussed meeting between the two coaches in 2016 helps balance the scales going into this weekend a little. Serving as the offensive coordinator for Washington that year, McVay’s offense managed 41 points against Fangio’s Bears, something Staley was quick to mention in his job interview with the Rams coach a few years later.

“I remember in my interview with Sean, we’re talking about 2018, and I’m like, ‘Hey, I know what you did in 2016,’” Staley said. “He doesn’t talk about that, and I think you need to talk about that. ... We were able to declassify some things. Only when I felt like I’d get the job, though. It’s the ultimate chess match, the ultimate respect.”

As the board resets on the latest chess match between the two, Staley said he wouldn’t expect Fangio to alter much of his process even in the lead-up to playing one of the league’s best play-callers a second time in one season.

McVay might, though — a key difference between two proven approaches.

“Well, I can tell you, with Vic Fangio, his preparation doesn’t change,” Staley said. “He’s done this too many times. He’s one of the most consistent people that you’re going to be around. I wish I knew him when he was super young so I could see if he was that way when he was a young guy like I am. Sean knows when the matchups are premium, that’s when he’s going to elevate his game. You’ve seen Sean do that in the playoffs since he’s been a head coach. But he’s going to elevate and do what he feels like is best within that plan and really study.”

With his familiarity with both coaches, Staley said his “iPad game” viewing will key in on how the Rams start offensively. The former Los Angeles Chargers head coach knows how difficult it can be making calls against McVay when he gets an early edge.

“You can tell when he’s in rhythm with the sequencing of his plays and where he kind of feels like he’s got the defense on its heels,” Staley said. “He’s on the attack. You hear basketball players being aggressive, that’s kind of what I think of with Sean when he’s really aggressive and really in rhythm as a play-caller.”

From there, he’ll watch to see how the patience he believes separates Fangio from most defensive play-callers comes to bear in the final moments of a game many around the league are sure to study in the months to come.

“With Vic, what stands out to me with him as a play-caller is his patience,” Staley said. “He’s extremely patient, he’s not going to be rattled. If there are adjustments to make, he’ll make them late in the game if he needs to because he has that gift of having so many experiences and he’s seen everything. He’s got a really good feel for the game about when to deploy certain looks and when to save them for a certain moment.”

The Eagles play host to the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday in the divisional round of the playoffs. Join Eagles beat reporters Olivia Reiner and EJ Smith as they dissect the hottest storylines surrounding the team on Gameday Central, live from Lincoln Financial Field.