No wonder the Eagles let the trade deadline pass. Cooper DeJean, Nakobe Dean, Nolan Smith, and others have played great.

The Lions got Za’Darius Smith. The Eagles bet on Nolan Smith.

Given the turmoil the Eagles’ roster endured before Tuesday’s trade deadline, it would have been perfectly reasonable for them to make a trade or two as insurance against a second straight autumn fall. A corner, an edge rusher, a lineman, a linebacker ... something.

Star cornerback Darius Slay, 33, missed the end of the 2023 season after knee surgery, left Game 5 with a knee injury, then left Game 7 and missed Game 8 with a groin injury. Star left tackle Jordan Mailata and star tight end Dallas Goedert each left Game 5 with hamstring injuries; Mailata’s landed him on injured reserve at least through Sunday’s game at Dallas, and Goedert, while not on IR, hasn’t played since, either. The Eagles hoped that free agent Devin White would lead their reconstructed linebacker corps, but they cut him during the bye week, having never played a snap. Nobody knew if 2023 first-rounder Nolan Smith would improve in Year 2, and edge rusher Bryce Huff, a $51.1 million free agent, has 1½ sacks and just eight tackles in eight games; he’s hovered somewhere between disappointment and bust.

Incredibly, the Eagles are winning despite the turmoil. They are 6-2, tied for the fifth-best record in football. They’ve won four in a row. And, at the deadline Tuesday, they stood pat, for the first time in a long time.

Maybe GM Howie Roseman is haunted by the ghosts of Golden Tate in 2018, and Genard Avery in 2019, and Robert Quinn in 2022, and Kevin Byard in 2023. Maybe he’s just satisfied with the depth the team has shown. Coach Nick Sirianni is.

“I really feel very strongly about our team and where we are,” he said Wednesday morning. “Howie’s done a great job of building it, to date. Didn’t feel like, at that time, there was anything to do.”

Typically, the most common and impactful players to move at the deadline are edge rushers and running backs, but the Eagles have three healthy backs and rank second in the league with 174.8 rushing yards per game. The pass rush?

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Well, after a slow start, the Eagles now have a respectable 22 sacks, 15 of them during the winning streak. Brandon Graham, in his 15th year, is having one of his best seasons, and Josh Sweat has five sacks in the last five games, but they’ve gotten little from Huff. Still, the Eagles didn’t even sniff the Za’Darius Smith sweepstakes. That’s because Nolan Smith is having a fine season as a pass rusher (2½ sacks), a run-stopper, and a tackler. Nolan Smith needs playing time. Adding an edge rusher like Za’Darius Smith would steal snaps.

Graham knew something might happen. He’s happy that nothing did.

“It feels good, man,” Graham said Wednesday. “Usually, Howie makes a move. We’ve just got to stay healthy. He’s trusting us to just keep being us.”

Rookie corners Cooper DeJean and Quinyon Mitchell have played out of their minds.

Incredibly, DeJean ranks No. 2 among cornerbacks with at least 100 coverage snaps played, according to Pro Football Focus. Mitchell has been even better; in 303 snaps, he has yet to allow a touchdown pass. He ranks in the middle of the pack, but then, DeJean plays nickel and therefore usually faces a lesser receiver, and DeJean has played fewer than half the snaps that Mitchell has.

“I call them my sons,” Slay said, pointing at the lockers of the rookies next to his. “They’re going to have a bright, bright future.”

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Veteran backup Isaiah Rodgers, Slay’s direct understudy, has been good enough, too.

“It’s hard to keep the level up,” Slay said. “I’ve been in places when, one guy’s gone, it’s a mega-drop.”

Slay participated in Wednesday’s practice and said he might play again as soon as Sunday, but even without that likelihood, it made no sense to send a cartload of draft picks to the Saints for Marshon Lattimore or to help the Rams unload cooked corner Tre’Davious White.

Nakobe Dean’s jaw-dropping end-zone interception sealed the win Sunday.

It would be the signature play of the Eagles’ season if Saquon Barkley hadn’t backward-hurdled a would-be tackler earlier in the game.

Dean’s interception is a benchmark of his steadily improving play after two years of injury and development. He won the starting job over White in training camp, and seems to be validating the third-round pick the Eagles used on him in 2022.

Meanwhile, Zack Baun has been a revelation. A part-time player and mainly a special-teamer for four seasons in New Orleans, Baun signed a one-year, $1.6 million, show-me contract with the Eagles. He has shown us all he’s the most consistent defender on the team.

Bonus: Baun ranks No. 2 in the league in coverage among linebackers, a huge weakness for Eagles linebackers for years.

“The trade deadline is not my forte,” Dean said with élan, “but me and Zack are not surprised by how we played.”

Grant Calcaterra, the tight end who had nine catches for 120 yards his first two seasons, has 13 catches for 160 yards since Goedert’s injury. His play has been as impressive as his mustache.

Goedert has missed time in each of his last six seasons. While Goedert is a top-five tight end, Calcaterra has become more than a dependable target. He’s an excellent pass blocker, too.

“He’s done a really nice job,” Sirianni said after Calcaterra caught a career-high five passes in the win over Jacksonville. “Guys taking advantage of their opportunities is huge. ... It’s huge for your football team, but it’s also huge for these guys and their careers moving forward.”

Calcaterra, a sixth-round pick in 2022, has a year left on his rookie contract, but he seems like the kind of player Roseman likes to lock up long-term. He’s a better long-term bet than, say, Browns tight end David Njoku, who has battled an ankle injury most of the season.

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“It’s been extremely gratifying,” Calcaterra said. “It’s definitely come at a good time. I’m happy it’s worked out.”

Fred Johnson’s redemption story continues with a new chapter each week; he ably replaced concussed right tackle Lane Johnson in Game 4 and has been a revelation on the left side since Mailata’s injury. Fred Johnson missed practice with a knee issue suffered late Sunday (he said he expects to play this week), and while he hasn’t set the world afire like Mailata, PFF’s second-rated frontline tackle, or Lane Johnson, who ranks sixth, he has been more than serviceable.

Fred Johnson went undrafted in 2019, and he thought his career might be over when the Buccaneers released him in the middle of the 2022 season. But the Eagles spent the past two years crafting a football player from a massive mound of humanity; 6-foot-7, 326 pounds of relatively immovable object. They weren’t going to get anything better on the trade market.

“That’s obviously something you think about,” Fred Johnson said, “but I can’t focus on what they have going with trades. Everybody’s got a role. I just try to execute that.”