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

After the Eagles collapsed down the stretch, they bade farewell to two big-brained failures and hired an old guy from outside Scranton with the hopes he’ll make sure their last three first-round picks, all Georgia Bulldogs, don’t turn out to be just plain ol’ dogs.

The Eagles moved up in 2022 to draft tackle Jordan Davis with the 13th overall pick. They moved up again in 2023 to draft tackle Jalen Carter with the ninth overall pick. Then, with players like Lions tight end Sam LaPorta and Packers receiver Jayden Reed still available, they drafted edge rusher Nolan Smith with the 30th overall pick.

If they don’t play better in 2024 it won’t matter if their defensive coordinator is 65-year-old Vic Fangio, 82-year-old Bill Parcells, 71-year-old Bill Belichick, or the late, great Buddy Ryan.

It is difficult to impart how little that trio of college stars contributed during the Eagles’ last seven games, of which they lost six, mainly because of defensive indifference. It’s difficult, but it’s worth a try.

In a combined 603 defensive snaps over those seven games, Davis, Carter, and Smith combined for 2½ sacks and zero tackles for losses. Three of Carter’s lowest grades by profootballfocus.com this season came in that stretch. Five of Davis’ games graded far below the NFL average. Smith didn’t play much in the first 12 games, but in the last six, including the playoffs, as his snap count rose, his grades plummeted.

In the biggest moments of the season they were exquisitely, consistently ineffective. They would have been invisible if not, between them, Carter and Davis didn’t weigh 650 pounds.

You can blame their drop-offs and their inconsistency on the rookie wall; certainly, Davis and Carter made plays more frequently before the Game 11 overtime win over the Bills, in which both played a career-high number of snaps.

You can blame their subpar play on the shock of the NFL. They are the latest and best examples of why even the top college players — three stone-cold studs out of the mighty SEC — cannot compare with the dregs of the NFL. They gave up 35 to the Cardinals and got blown out by the Giants.

Regardless, whatever happened in 2023 cannot happen in 2024 and beyond. This is Fangio’s responsibility.

That’s OK. He’s met this challenge before.

In 2018, the Chicago Bears hired a 39-year-old offensive coordinator named Matt Nagy to become their head coach. They paired him with Fangio, the team’s crusty defensive coordinator whom they passed over for the head coaching job.

Fangio’s defense that season finished No. 1 in points allowed and rushing yards, and finished third in total yards allowed. It led Nagy and the rest of the team to a 12-4 record and the NFC North title, despite the presence of Mitch Trubisky.

Fangio became the head coach of the Denver Broncos in 2019. Nagy’s Bears never again finished above .500 again, and he was fired after the 2021 season.

That 2018 Bears defense featured Khalil Mack, an established star pass rusher, along with young defensive backs Eddie Jackson and Kyle Fuller, who, logically, developed nicely under Fangio; he’d played safety at Dunmore High, about 10 minutes northeast of downtown Scranton.

But it all worked because, out of nowhere, interior lineman Akiem Hicks had become a monster of the Midway.

Hicks landed in Chicago in 2016, a year after Fangio. He’d collected 9½ sacks and 22 tackles for losses in 61 games with the Saints, who’d drafted him in the third round, and the Patriots, who’d traded for him in in the middle of the 2015 season.

He was a young, 6-foot-5, 332-pound everyman who, because of recruiting violations, had to play college ball at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, in Canada. He wasn’t an everyman under Fangio.

In his first three seasons under Fangio in Chicago, Hicks blossomed like a red western lily in springtime on a Canadian meadow. He had 23 sacks and 38 tackles for losses, and went to the Pro Bowl after the 2018 season.

Like Hicks, Davis is young, and he’s about the same size, at 6-6 and 336 pounds. To date, like a younger Hicks, he has played like a giant everyman.

It will be Fangio’s job to make him as effective as he once made Hicks.

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Philadelphia does not take kindly to even moderate first-round busts along the defensive line and its edges. Mike Mamula, the seventh pick in 1995, remains a Philly punchline despite a modestly productive five-year career that ended because of injury. There has been no quarter given to Jon Harris (1997), Brodrick Bunkley (2006), Marcus Smith (2014), or even Jerome McDougle (2003), who received little sympathy after he got shot. Hell, Brandon Graham just finished his 14th season in Philly, and, after two trips to the Super Bowl, he’s still salty about how much abuse he took during the first seven.

Graham improved in lockstep with defensive tackle Fletcher Cox, a first-rounder in 2012. Graham had his best seasons after defensive tackle Javon Hargrave, a sack machine, joined the team in 2020. He finally reached double digits in sacks in 2022, when Haason Reddick came aboard and Josh Sweat matured. The Eagles led the league with 70 sacks that season.

They had 43 sacks in 2023. They lost several defensive starters from the previous season, chief among them Hargrave. They could lose both Cox and Graham this year. Their contracts expired.

Davis and Carter were drafted to replace Hargrave and Cox. Smith was drafted to replace Graham.

Fangio’s job is to make it so.