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A year after first eyeing him for the position, the Eagles have finally secured their man, bringing Vic Fangio back to Philadelphia as Nick Sirianni’s new defensive coordinator. The team made it official Saturday. The former Broncos head coach marks the Eagles’ first major addition since a late-season collapse, signed to revitalize what became one of the NFL’s worst defenses in 2023.
Fangio, 65, is no stranger to Philly. He was born and raised in Dunsmore, Pennsylvania, about two hours from the city. He also worked alongside Sirianni in 2022, when he quietly served as a consultant to Jonathan Gannon’s NFC-champion defense. In many ways, then, this pairing was always inevitable; even after becoming the Dolphins’ DC last offseason, Fangio hinted he would’ve had the same job with the Eagles if not for Gannon’s delayed departure to become the Cardinals’ head coach.
But what, exactly, does Fangio’s arrival mean for the Eagles defense? How might his entrance affect the way the team plays, and/or which kinds of players it prioritizes in offseason roster-building?
Just as Fangio’s now been tied to the organization for years, his influence on the Eagles’ strategy has been apparent for a while. The former Broncos coach is best known for maximizing and/or popularizing a two-high-safety scheme, which essentially prioritizes prevention of the big play: Always have back-end help in place, and keep everything in front of you. It’s precisely the kind of defense the Eagles ran under Gannon in 2022, and again, to a different degree, under Sean Desai and Matt Patricia in 2023.
So why would they double-down on an approach that gradually got worse from 2022-2023, leaving them with one of the most porous units in all of football? To start, it’s one thing to imitate a Fangio defense, and another to employ Fangio himself. This is a man who’s overseen 10 different top-10 defensive finishes at five different…
Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/eagles-hire-vic-fangio-as-new-defensive-coordinator-how-the-change-could-affect-philadelphia-in-2024/
Author : Cody Benjamin
Publish date : 2024-01-27 21:05:21
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