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

Vic Fangio may have spent more time at Veterans Stadium than anyone in 1984.

As a young assistant coach with the Philadelphia Stars, he logged long hours at the Vet. The USFL football team may have been behind the Eagles and Phillies in stadium hierarchy, but Fangio had an office deep in the cavernous bowl where he would grind film.

He was living the dream in his first professional job, but what made the experience optimal was getting to watch his beloved Phils on a daily basis.

“Every night, I’d go out and watch a few innings, even when we were in season,” Fangio said. “And then when our season ended in June, I had access to the stadium because I worked there. I’d just pull right up, park in my spot. I saw a million games.”

The Phils of 1984 lost far more than the current version. But Fangio got to cheer on All-Stars like Mike Schmidt and often had a front-row seat to watch the future Hall of Famer.

“Right along the third-base side,” he recalled recently during an interview with The Inquirer. “And remember they used to have the hot pants usherettes? I got to know them, and they’d tell me where nobody was sitting, and I’d go sit.”

Fangio’s memory may be a little fuzzy. The Hot Pants Patrol — a group of young women who ushered fans to their seats — ended in 1982. But the 66-year-old Eagles defensive coordinator remains sharp about most other details, especially when it comes to the baseball team he has passionately followed since growing up in Dunmore, Lackawanna County.

Forty years later, Fangio is back where it all started and where — he said upon his introductory news conference — he hopes it all ends. He didn’t mention winning a championship, but he hasn’t won another since the Stars in 1985 after they moved to Baltimore.

He followed Stars coach Jim Mora to the New Orleans Saints in 1986, and aside from a year with Stanford and a one-year sabbatical following his firing as head coach of the Denver Broncos, Fangio has been in the NFL since.

Despite being considered one of the best defensive minds in the league over the last three decades, he has reached the Super Bowl just once and lost with the San Francisco 49ers in 2013.

“I don’t think about it,” Fangio said about having never won an NFL title. “It’s because, first off, a lot of those years, realistically, it wasn’t possible. And when it was possible, we did come close. But you got to move on in this business or one loss will be another one.

“But would I like that? Yeah.”

The veteran Fangio could be the Eagles’ missing piece. He consulted for them two years ago during his season off, and they nearly won the Super Bowl. He was the logical choice to succeed Jonathan Gannon after he left for the Arizona Cardinals, but he had already taken the Miami Dolphins job, and coach Nick Sirianni was left scrambling.

Sean Desai, one of Fangio’s protégés, was hired instead. Desai didn’t fit, and neither did Fangio in Miami, and now Sirianni has his do-over at defensive coordinator. Gannon and Desai ran versions of Fangio’s much-imitated scheme, but the Eagles finally have the originator.

Fangio will be the old school to Sirianni’s and his predecessors’ new-school approaches to coaching and relating to players. He has been vocal about wanting the Eagles to practice more, and in news conferences has given glimpses of his direct, honest way of communication.

“There’s not a lot of fluff there,” Sirianni said. “He’s going to tell our guys when it’s right. He’s going to tell our guys when it’s wrong.”

» READ MORE: Vic Fangio already has the Eagles defense looking quick, deadly, and exciting

Fangio’s methods rankled some Dolphins, but he couldn’t have survived and thrived in the NFL had he not advanced with the times. In terms of scheme, that has meant keeping pace with the sophistication of current offenses and utilizing analytics — even if he maintains proprietorship over his formulas.

Fangio isn’t as interested in the touchy-feely parts of modern culture building. He has his ways of trying to bridge the generational divide. But of a dozen or so defensive players polled, they all had the same initial response when asked about the grizzly Fangio’s approach: He does not mince words.

“It’s his way of showing his love in a way, but it’s just tough love,” said safety Caden Sterns, who was the lone Eagle to have previously played under Fangio before being released Tuesday. “We’re here to do a job, so that’s what you want to hear. I’d rather hear that than somebody sugarcoat it.”

» READ MORE: Vic Fangio’s job: Make sure Jordan Davis, Jalen Carter, and Nolan Smith aren’t the latest Eagles DL busts

Like many Philadelphians, particularly the ones who live and die by their sports teams.

Fangio knows them well, having been a fan of Philly teams. He may have been raised two hours north, but he has strong takes and can second-guess the Phillies as well as any WIP caller. He’s enjoying the team’s recent success, though, and tries to avoid riding the reactionary waves like so many locals.

“That’s Philadelphia’s DNA,” Fangio said. “I got a little longer to lease than I think the average Philly fan does.”

Baseball was a young Fangio’s favorite sport. And he was a “Phillies diehard,” as he described it.

“About the best way to explain it is, when they were on the West Coast … I would hide my transistor radio in my bed and listen to the game, unbeknownst to my parents,” Fangio said a week before the Eagles’ opener vs. the Green Bay Packers in São Paulo Brazil. “I’d be sitting there listening to [announcers] By Saam, Bill Campbell, and Richie Ashburn.”

Dunmore is a suburb of Scranton, and while Fangio later realized that it was equidistant between Philly and New York, he said he initially couldn’t understand why half the fans from his area rooted for teams from another state.

“Where I’m from, it’s you’re either a Yankees or a Phillies fan,” Fangio said. “So I became a Yankees hater.”

He also supported the Eagles and 76ers, he said. But the Phils, despite their many struggles in the late 1960s and early 1970s, were his No. 1, and Dick Allen — still “Richie” to Fangio — was his baseball hero. He played the game — all the positions, he said — through high school.

But Fangio, a former safety at Dunmore High School, got the football coaching bug playing for legendary coach Jack Henzes and later when he started attending clinics while at East Stroudsburg University.

He never looked back. He returned to his high school and coached there for several years, and then at Milford Academy in Connecticut before moving to Philly to become a defensive assistant with the Stars.

Fangio’s reason for choosing football over baseball is simple: He believes that he can have more of an impact on the gridiron. Some of that has to do with the fewer games and more practices that allow for teaching. Some of it has to do with being able to make calls on every play.

“There’s just more strategy,” he said.

» READ MORE: Vic Fangio's defensive victory

Reminded of late Orioles manager Earl Weaver’s derisive comment about the difference between the sports — “This ain’t a football game, we do this every day,” Weaver said — Fangio recalled a conversation he had with baseball’s Don Zimmer during his Vet days with the Stars.

“When we practiced and the Phillies were home, we had to be off by a certain time. We would literally tape athletic tape down for the sidelines,” he said. “And I struck up a conversation with Zimmer. And when he started asking what our days are like, he said, ‘You guys are nuts.’”

Baseball has evolved and takes more preparation. But football has long been a game that involves all-night film sessions and, until recently in the NFL, practice, practice, practice. There’s still significantly more practice time than in the majors, but concessions to players and advances in sports science have resulted in less on-field training.

The Eagles have been at one extreme, reducing practice and preseason participation. They were among the healthiest teams in the league in 2022 and 2023, and went to the playoffs partly as a result. But conditioning and tackling were issues down the stretch last season.

When Fangio arrived, he pushed back on the Eagles’ schedule and said so publicly. Sirianni was already leaning toward increasing the players’ workload in training camp, but he allowed most defensive starters to play in the preseason while the offense rested.

“Vic is not shy about telling me,” Sirianni said Sunday when asked about taking Fangio’s advice. “I love that I have a guy in Coach Fangio that he’s going to tell me what he thinks from his perspective. You don’t want guys that say, ‘Yeah, whatever you want.’

“You want guys to be able to say, ‘Here is what I’m thinking. Here is why I’m thinking it. You’re the head coach. Take the information as you need to.’”

On Monday, Fangio said he wished the Eagles had more than just one joint practice with another team in camp. But he seemed to have accepted the limits of his position.

“You never get enough, in my opinion,” Fangio said. “But we certainly have had enough to be ready.”

Fangio is just as staunch in his long-held beliefs about baseball. He said the game was better when offenses tried more to manufacture runs than hit homers, that the designated hitter took decision-making away from managers, and that more teams in the playoffs has devalued the regular season.

“You shouldn’t be playing baseball in November,” Fangio said. “It should be a rule, a law. But everybody wants to expand the playoffs for excitement. OK, I get it. NFL is guilty of it, too.”

But there’s a lot Fangio still loves about the modern game. He acknowledged the relevancy of sabermetrics because it’s pitcher vs. batter, versus football where analytics aren’t as useful because it’s 22 players intertwined and dependent on each other.

The defensive shift in baseball, he said, showed the value of analytics the most because “it ruined some guys’ careers, Ryan Howard [the former Phillies slugger] being one of them.”

But Fangio has welcomed the end of the shift and other such rule changes, such as the pitch clock, that were enacted to update the sport and attract younger fans.

“It just goes to show you that everybody was a little skeptical and people adjust,” Fangio said. “Same thing in football. They say, ‘Hey, we want this rule.’ Go ahead, do it. They’ll adjust. The players will adjust. Fans will adjust. If it’s done for a good reason and it’s worthwhile.”

When it comes to analytics in football, Fangio said last month that he loves them, but with a twist.

“Give me anything you want, and I’ll sort through it and use it as I see fit,” he said. “But I’ve been doing analytics myself my own way for years, and I don’t share my process with anybody. Even fellow coaches.

“I believe in analytics. I think analytics people miss the boat a little bit on what’s important, but I’m not going to tell them what’s important. I do it myself.”

The Eagles have long been at the forefront of using analytics in almost every aspect of their operation. Assistant general manager Alec Halaby, who oversees that department, said he has enjoyed working with Fangio and that “he’s worked really well with our analytics unit.”

» READ MORE: Division in numbers: examining the inner workings of the Eagles, the importance of analytics in the organization, the internal conflicts over its usage, and its use going forward

Halaby said he hasn’t yet had a conversation with Fangio about his slight on the analytics community. But that may never happen since the coach, who has led eight NFL defenses since 1995, keeps his own process secret.

Fangio’s revelation suggested to some extent why the hiring of his protégés hasn’t always translated to success. His scheme, at its most elemental, favors two-high safety shells to limit explosive plays and light boxes with front mechanics that allow for more resources in coverage.

It gained in popularity about five years ago when three of the top offensive play callers in the league — Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan, and Matt LaFleur, coach of Friday’s opponent, the Packers — cited Fangio’s defense as the most difficult to face.

Brandon Staley, a pupil of Fangio’s, ran a version of his system under McVay, and the Rams finished with the No. 1 unit in 2020. Some coordinators adopted certain principles from the defense that aided them in specific matchups.

Not every Fangio disciple has panned out. There could have been multiple variables that hindered their chances, a lack of talent being most prominent. Fangio himself has had mixed results over the course of his career.

But only he knows every facet of his operation and the nuances of calling it during a game.

“I’ve had people call me about people they’re trying to think about hiring as a coordinator, and they say, ‘How do you think he’ll do?’ I say, ‘I don’t know. He’s never had to call it. He’ll do the other stuff fine, I know that,’” Fangio said. “But there’s some guys that can’t call a game, even though they’re good coaches — offense or defense.

“You have to think fast. Often I say, ‘I’m not real smart, I’m not really highly intelligent, but what I do know I can process fast,’ if that makes sense.”

» READ MORE: Inside Jonathan Gannon’s Vic Fangio-influenced defensive turnaround with the Eagles

It’s one reason why Fangio prefers to call the defense from the coaches’ box. It’s the best view, which, he said, makes him less reliant on others for information. In decrying baseball’s allowance of video for players in between at-bats, Fangio noted that the NFL gave coaches instant replays for one game this preseason.

“I hope video never comes into our game during the game,” he said. “To me, there’s an art of knowing what’s happening in a game without the aid of video, and I don’t think that should go away.”

In Miami, some of Fangio’s assistants reportedly felt left out of the defensive equation. He dismissed the various reports about discord with the Dolphins in May. Eagles defensive backs coach Christian Parker, who first worked under Fangio in Denver, said his boss is willing to share.

“He can come across a certain way, kind of being close to the chest,” Parker said. “But I think whenever you ask him questions, he’s an open book. He answers everything. He usually has a story or a play that accompanies how he wants something to be played.”

In camp, Fangio showed his players old film of legends like Ray Lewis delivering devastating hits. Some of the reels predated even the coordinator’s time in the NFL. The clips were divided into two segments: blows that would be outlawed today and ones that would still be legal.

To safety Reed Blankenship, linebacker Nakobe Dean, and others, the presentation exemplified Fangio’s old-school bona fides but also was meant to appeal to a younger generation’s sensibilities. The ultimate message: play physical but be smart.

Dean said Fangio will purposely use outdated football phrases — “slobberknocker” hits is a favorite — during meetings as a source of player amusement.

“The way he does it, he knows we’re going to laugh,” Dean said. “So I feel that’s another way we kind of connect.”

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

Fangio is mostly business, though, even as it relates to off-field issues. The day after the Eagles trimmed their roster to 53, he displayed projected salaries for various types of players and how much they would pay in taxes, NFLPA fees, and other such expenses.

“And he was like, ‘How much money you have after all that?’” Dean said. “He basically was like, he hates seeing guys that he had coached in the past don’t have no money or be struggling. So he was like, make sure y’all be using your money well.”

But he’s a throwback in most ways. Dean joked that the brand of smokeless tobacco Fangio dips is aptly named “Grizzly.” Few coaches nowadays would dare to be publicly critical of players, but Fangio will give honest assessments to reporters.

He’s more blunt in private. Sterns, who was signed on Fangio’s recommendation even though he has a knee injury, recalled the first time he heard his brutal truth following a difficult stretch during his rookie camp with the Broncos.

“He was like, ‘Well, you had a great training camp, but these last couple of days are the reason why you fell in the draft. You know that, right?’” Sterns said, laughing.

The Eagles have had candid defensive coordinators. Jim Johnson was a straight shooter. Jim Schwartz, during film reviews, pointed a red laser at the guilty parties on the screen and then at their chests in the auditorium.

Schwartz, an Orioles fan, would use baseball analogies in meetings. Told that Fangio is an avid Phils fan, each of the players surveyed said they didn’t know much about the coach beyond football.

Rookie defensive back Cooper DeJean said he saw Fangio in the Eagles’ suite at Citizens Bank Park during the summer.

“He was kind of just hanging out. I didn’t want to bother him,” DeJean said. “He sat in the front row and was watching the whole time. I was watching the whole time, but not as intense as he was.”

Fangio said he watches Phils games like he’s managing. He likes to compare the sports and has often told the anecdote about there being one NFL game for every 10 MLB games and how two consecutive losses in football equates to 20 in baseball — “until 17 games ruined it,” he said.

He had another take on the widely held belief that the NFL has more parity, pointing out that the best teams in baseball win 100 games, which would be the equivalent of 10-6 in a 16-game season, and the worst teams win 60, which would be 6-10.

“In football, you’re going to get the 13-, 14-win team. You’re going to have the three-, four-win team, two-win team,” Fangio said. “There’s really more parity in baseball, when you look at it that way.”

He’s a traditionalist and uses the hated Yankees and their strict appearance policy to illustrate the point. Former owner George Steinbrenner, who implemented the rule, might be dead, but players who come to the Yankees still adhere to keeping their hair short and their faces shaved.

“I like tradition, and every player in the league, they know when they go there, they got to agree to it,” Fangio said. “Now, I don’t think they agree to it in writing, but they agree to it verbally, and nobody has challenged it. Players union stays away. And I think it’s pretty cool.”

If baseball isn’t exactly cool with his younger generation of players, Fangio has fellow Phillies fanatics who work for the Eagles and engage his Monday morning quarterbacking of manager Rob Thomson — assistant equipment manager Craig Blake and director of video operations Kevin Dougherty chief among them.

Fangio wanted to keep his more critical statements about the Phils private, but he has many of the same opinions as local fans. He questioned Thomson’s decision to not pinch run for Kyle Schwarber in the 10th inning of the Aug. 26 game vs. the Astros. He didn’t like the trade of reliever Seranthony Domínguez because “you don’t give up on live, young arms like that.”

And he’s worried the Phils’ sloppy defense will come back to haunt them in the playoffs.

Like in the NFL, there isn’t as much of an emphasis on defense.

“They don’t care about it,” Fangio said, “until it’s not there.”

Bryce Harper, who moved to first base last season, still makes him nervous.

“It’s experience — just like here. Everybody wants Cooper DeJean to show up and play. He’s had one week of practice,” Fangio said of the rookie who missed most of camp with a hamstring injury. “You need time on task. You need practice. You need to play. Sitting in meetings is good and it’s valuable, but it only goes so far.”

» READ MORE: In defense of Rob Thomson, who keeps winning even though he won’t pinch-hit Bryce Harper on his day off

Fangio loves watching practice in all its forms. He’s built up his share of relationships with baseball people over the years and befriended Hazleton native and former Cubs manager Joe Maddon when he was with the Bears and with the Rockies’ Bud Black when he was with the Broncos.

When the Rockies were in town in April, Black invited Fangio to watch batting practice and even let him sit in on a bullpen session.

Fangio has seen his share of behind-the-scenes misconduct dating back to the Vet, partly because the Stars coaches’ offices were near the home and away clubhouses.

“This is 1984. No cell phones. There’s pay phones. Still everywhere. We used to see Pete Rose on the pay phone down in the tunnel,” Fangio said of the former Phillie who then was a visiting player and eventually would be banned from the game for gambling.

Fangio didn’t get to watch much baseball when he left Philly. There wasn’t an MLB team at his next three stops — New Orleans, Carolina, and Indianapolis. But when he moved on to Houston with the Texans, it started a near-run of World Series appearances in the cities in which he worked.

The Astros reached the Series for the first time in 2005, but lost. The Orioles, in his next stop in Baltimore, didn’t count because “God couldn’t help them,” Fangio said. But the Giants won two in the four seasons he was in San Francisco, and the Cubs ended their 108-year jinx while he was in Chicago.

“I went to Denver after that,” Fangio said, “and [the Rockies] were the [expletive].”

The same could have been said about his Broncos. They went 19-30 in his three seasons at the helm.

Fangio accepted partial credit for the Phils making the World Series in 2022. He did consult the Eagles through Super Bowl LVII. But the true test of his cosmic touch will come this fall. He’s not saying it’s boom or bust for the Phils, but he knows how restless the natives can get.

“Their whole success or not is going to be they need to get in the playoffs and win a couple series,” Fangio said of the Phillies. “And if they’re one and done, nobody will be happy.”

The Eagles have had similar postseason runs in the two previous years. Fangio the baseball fan would like nothing better than another championship to celebrate. Fangio the football coach may downplay the missing accomplishment on his resumé, but he may have the team to get him that elusive Lombardi Trophy.

It has been 12 seasons since he was last in the Super Bowl, and he can still remember his late-night stroll in New Orleans after the Ravens squeaked by his 49ers, 34-31, at the Superdome.

“I’m walking around the French Quarter by myself, and you’re just frustrated you didn’t get it done and can’t sleep,” Fangio said. “So, yeah, it’s not a good feeling. But I’m more about the process and the game-to-game stuff than the big overall picture.

“And if you get good enough and get another chance, you gotta take advantage of it.”

The Super Bowl, Fangio was reminded, is back in New Orleans in February.

“It is,” he said. “It is.”