NEW ORLEANS — The first day he came back to the NovaCare Complex for OTAs, he could tell something was different. He could feel it. He could sense it.
“I just feel like whatever happened last year was a slap in the face,” Reed Blankenship said. “It was definitely a wake-up call.
“In OTAs, when everybody started to come back, I walked into the training room and you could tell there was something different, something different in that room that we didn't have a year before. You could just sense it.”
That was the start of one of the most remarkable defensive turnarounds in NFL history.
That nightmare stretch of eight games to end last year, the Eagles allowed 31 points and 404 yards per game, changed defensive coordinators, transformed from a 10-1 team to a wild-card disaster and left all kinds of questions about their defensive future.
And here we are. The Eagles had the No. 1 defense in the NFL during the regular season, have allowed just five touchdowns in three postseason games and face the Chiefs Sunday in Super Bowl LIX at the Superdome.
“After last year, nobody expected us to have this kind of defense,” Milton Williams said. “I just feel like we're just more detailed in everything that we do, more sound. They give us a lot of tools to just kind of go out there and play free. If we see something, we can react to it instead of just playing a call and then wait till you get to the sideline (to talk about it) and things like that. So we can just kind of react to what we see.
“And the communication got better. Everybody on the same page. We all know what each other is thinking. That helps us play faster.”
The Eagles jumped from 26th last year in yards allowed to first, and that’s the biggest jump to the No. 1 spot in NFL history.
The transformation started when the Eagles hired Vic Fangio as defensive coordinator, and he brought in a bunch of terrific new coaches. It continued when Howie Roseman jettisoned most of the defensive starters – Haason Reddick, James Bradberry, Nick Morrow, Zach Cunningham, Kevin Byard, Justin Evans, Shaquille Leonard, Bradley Roby and so on – and replenished the roster with young talent, starting with rookie defensive backs Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean. Some 14 players who started at least one game on defense last year are gone.
With the new staff, young players like Nolan Smith, Nakobe Dean and Jalen Carter made huge jumps. And the emergence of Zack Baun and re-signing of Chauncey Gardner-Johnson helped transform the whole thing into an elite unit.
“You could tell it was going to be different from day one,” said Jordan Davis, the only Eagle to start every game over the last two years. “It was immediate.
“Vic came in and we were just an open book, and he started teaching us from the day he got here and eventually that kind of led to this point. So for him to come in, just play to our defense, play to our strengths and our weaknesses, it just set us up with the mindset that we have. Being tough, being physical all the time.”
The only guys who started six or more games in both 2023 and 2024 were Blankenship, Williams, Davis and Josh Sweat.
It's an astonishing amount of change in one offseason and with the exception of the signing of Bryce Huff, literally every move worked.
And the final chapter for this revamped unit comes Sunday, when it faces the ultimate challenge in Patrick Mahomes.
“It really started in 2022, with that draft and getting Jordan and Nakobe,” Howie Roseman said. “We knew we had to transition from an older defense and play younger guys. I think last year after the season, I said we’ve got to start playing younger guys. And that's not on the coaches, you know that starts with me. As the cap gets tighter you have to go with young players.
“So I think it really started with the 2022 draft and then the 2023 draft and then obviously we continued to build in the offseason last year. So I would say it was really a three-year process and obviously got fortunate the way the drafts fell in those years to get some of these guys who were playing at a high level.”
The improvement is astounding when you compare last year and this year:
Yards allowed per game:
2023: 356
2024: 278
Points allowed per game:
2023: 23.9
2024: 16.2
Opposing passer rating:
2023: 97.6
2024: 82.5
Takeaways:
2023: 18
2024: 26
Third down:
2023: 46.4 percent
2024: 35.5 percent
“I knew we weren't playing up to our standard last year,” Blankenship said. “But we got a lot of new guys and they all bought in. Shout out to the front office for doing this.
“But it goes way deeper than that. Man, when (Nick) Sirianni preaches about being close, it's real. And that helps tremendously. If I don't like C.J,, I’m not going to work that well with him. If I don't like Slay, I’m not going to work well with him. That goes with any team. It's a team effort.
“But this team is so close and that directly goes into how we play. I would lay my body on the line for these guys, and they would lay their bodies on the line for me. That's what you’ve got to have.”
