Vic Fangio’s Defensive Blueprint: How New Faces, Versatility Will Define 2025 Eagles Defense

“Defensive coordinator Vic Fangio has a valuable chess piece in slot corner Cooper DeJean,” Chadiha writes for NFL Media. “Who could move to outside corner or safety in base defense looks depending on how the other players at those spots develop. Fangio also has tremendous faith in the maturation of edge rusher Nolan Smith (who had four sacks in the last year’s postseason) and the potential of second-year edge rusher Jalyx Hunt (who had a sack in that Super Bowl win over Kansas City).

“The Eagles are also high on adding first-round pick Jihaad Campbell to a linebacker corps that includes All-Pro Zack Baun. Like Baun, Campbell has the versatility to line up in various spots of the defense and be impactful. In other words, there may be some new faces on defense in Philly. The expectations, however, shouldn’t change that much.”

There’s a common thread, running through the key players Chadiha points out as being pivotal to the Eagles’ success.

With the exception of Baun, they’re all homegrown talents.

Fangio sounds convinced, that after adding Campbell and safety Andrew Mukuba during the first two rounds of the NFL Draft and retaining Baun off the most prolific season of his career, that he has the pieces in place to build on 2024 rather than take a step back in 2025.

“I told the players this,” Fangio told reporters, on June 3. “I look at this year, very similar to last year in that at this time last year, we had a lot of turnover in personnel from the previous year. You had Baun, nobody knew what he was at this point last year. You had Nakobe, who hadn’t played any meaningful NFL football in his first two years. You had [LB] Oren Burks, who we had just signed. You had [CB] Isaiah Rodgers, who we had just signed. You had [DT Moro] Ojomo, who didn’t play hardly at all his rookie year. We got Nolan, who didn’t play hardly at all his rookie year. We got Chauncey [S C.J. Gardner-Johnson] back. We drafted Q [CB Quinyon Mitchell], Cooper, Jalyx.

“We had a lot of question marks at that time. This year, those names are replaced. Ringo, Adoree’, Sydney, McCollum, Ojulari, Uche, [DT] Byron Young, [DT] Gabe Hall, [DT Thomas] Booker, Jihaad, all the draft picks– Mukuba, [DT Ty] Robinson, [LB] Smael [Mondon Jr.], and then the rest of the rookies. Some of those guys in that second list have to become like those guys in the first list, and I don’t know how that’s going to turn out, but I look at us really basically the same one year to the next. The names have changed. Hopefully we’ll get the same results from these new guys that we got from a lot of the new guys last year.”

Blending returning veterans with young ascending players was the magic blueprint for Fangio’s Eagles defense in 2024 to become the most dominant in the league, and a second year working together with the returning talent and integrating a pair of highly drafted and highly touted rookies just might make Philadelphia more dominant this fall.