I thought the Eagles’ defense was similar against the Rams as it was against the Bears. For a long time, this looked like a performance that should have been enough to win. Then the last two meaningful Rams possessions happened, and it all fell apart.
That is where I am with this defense right now. Good, not great. There is enough talent to compete with a very good Rams offense, but this group cannot keep carrying an offense that went 0-for-12 on third down. I think fatigue mattered again. But that can’t
excuse every clean pocket, missed tackle, or coverage mistake. The defense still had a chance to close this game out and failed.
There was plenty of soft zone and a lot of completions that felt a little passive. There was a weird amount of Cover 2 in this game. I understand trying to make Matthew Stafford sustain drives rather than giving him easy explosives, and that approach worked for stretches. But if you are going to play that way, you need to tackle well and eventually make the quarterback uncomfortable. The Eagles did neither consistently enough. Let’s get into it.
Defense
We may as well start with an interception! We need some positivity in our lives. Last week, I wondered whether Vic Fangio might lean into a little more man coverage with this personnel, and this was an example of why I could see the appeal. The Eagles begin with a single-high safety and play man underneath. This is a different starting picture from the two-high structures we usually associate with Fangio. Jonathan Greenard does an excellent job creating pressure. Stafford overthrows the receiver, and Andrew Mukuba takes advantage by making a great play on the ball.
That is a pretty good way to help an offense that cannot move the ball!
Jeremiah Trotter Jr. makes it difficult to watch these games without wondering whether he should be playing more. His awareness is excellent. He recognizes the receiving threat quickly, gets into position before the throw, and limits the opportunity for yards after the catch. There is very little hesitation.
That is the difference between Trotter and Jihaad Campbell for me right now. Campbell has the athletic ability to cover in space, but Trotter is quicker to understand where he needs to be. I am not ready to scream that Campbell should be benched. He is a second-year, first-round linebacker, and there is a development question here as well as an immediate performance question. But Trotter has earned meaningful snaps. If the choice is this close, I would seriously consider rotating them within games rather than treating it as an all-or-nothing decision. You can keep developing Campbell while acknowledging that Trotter is playing good football.
The Quinyon Mitchell vs. Davante Adams matchup was awesome. Adams wins this rep with a cheeky little push-off, but there is more to it than that. Watch the route. He sells the possibility of coming back, creates just enough hesitation, and then breaks back toward Stafford. Against a corner as good as Mitchell, that tiny pause matters. Adams is still a fantastic receiver, and these two gave as good as they got.
The more frustrating part is the time Stafford has in the pocket. The Eagles send five rushers and still do not make Stafford uncomfortable. Jalyx Hunt is being used as a stand-up rusher here, which was one of several different things Fangio tried. I understand why he was searching for answers. The front simply is not winning enough on its own. There were a lot of stunts, but those take time to develop, and Stafford is very capable of finding an answer before the rush gets there. You cannot ask Mitchell to win every rep against Adams while the quarterback stands there comfortably. That’s a tough ask for any cornerback.
Here is another changeup. The Eagles drop both edge defenders into coverage and bring both off-ball linebackers. We had not seen this from them this year, and I liked seeing Fangio try something different. Campbell takes on the running back and does a good job as a rusher. I think he is being held, too, although Stafford gets the ball out quickly enough to prevent the pressure from becoming decisive.
Unfortunately, Tariq Woolen loses to Puka Nacua on the outside. Woolen was better than he was against the Bears, but he still wasn’t that good. Nacua won against him several times.
The run defense was a mixed bag, but I do not think it was the main reason the Eagles lost. The Rams finished with 106 yards on 25 carries, averaging 4.2 yards per attempt. I thought the linebackers and secondary were a little more patient coming downhill, which helped them avoid being pulled out of position by play action as often as they were against the Bears. Personally, I’m OK giving up 4.2 yards per rush if it means they don’t get killed by play action as they did against the Bears.
Trotter deserves another mention here. He is so clever at avoiding the offensive linemen trying to climb up to him. He finds his way through without getting swallowed by a block, stays involved, and finishes the play. This is what I liked about him before the Eagles drafted him. He won’t always produce a spectacular athletic rep, but he knows how to get to the football. Sometimes the evaluation really is that simple. He is a good player. He always has, and I think he will be for a long time in this league.
Moro Ojomo makes a huge stop on 3rd-and-1 to force a punt. This is how you avoid a double team! Instead of sitting there and letting the blockers get their hands on him, he attacks across the front and gets into the play before they can establish control.
I have complained about Fangio slanting his defensive linemen because of the boom-or-bust nature of it, especially when the movement can open a lane elsewhere. But 3rd-and-1 is exactly the kind of situation where I like taking that chance. You need immediate penetration, and Ojomo provides it. The call and the execution work together here. This defense still produced some excellent situational stops before the late collapse.
Hunt at off-ball linebacker, in coverage, on first down?! I loved seeing this. He does a good job, too. As a former safety, he has the background to be comfortable away from the line of scrimmage, and I have wanted the Eagles to explore more of his versatility rather than treating him exclusively as a standard edge defender. I just don’t think he’s a special rusher, so I would try and get him moving around to give him different looks. Moving Hunt around could also give Fangio more ways to disguise where pressure is coming from. I would like to see him build on this package each week.
This is 3rd-and-10, and Stafford has nearly four seconds in a completely clean pocket. Look at the space around him. That is about as comfortable as a quarterback can be in this situation. The Eagles’ stunts felt predictable at times, and they didn’t generate enough direct interior pressure to collapse the pocket as the game developed. I want to see someone drive an offensive lineman backward and force Stafford to move off his spot. It just did not happen often enough.
The Rams use a three-level stretch here, putting receiving options at different depths on the same side of the field. That is difficult to defend when the quarterback has all the time he needs to wait for the routes to develop. Michael Carter II does just enough here, helped by a throw that is not particularly good, to force the incompletion. I thought both Carter II and Mukuba were much better this week. This is a good example of the secondary surviving a rep that the pass rush did very little to help. Sadly, they couldn’t do this all game.
I loved this from Quinyon Mitchell. We have talked about the defense looking a little soft recently, so I am absolutely fine with him letting Adams know how he feels. I enjoyed the competitive edge in this matchup throughout. Neither player was backing down, and when Adams won, it was rarely by much.
I was gutted when he went out injured. Partly because the Eagles lost an outstanding corner, obviously, but also because I wanted to keep watching this battle. This was one of the best parts of the game. He had some outstanding reps against a receiver who can still make life miserable for almost anyone.
I think we have underestimated how difficult this interception is for Cooper DeJean. It’s a hell of a play. He makes the catch look so effortless that it looks like an easy catch. Then he stays on his feet and turns it into a 25-yard return. The Eagles communicate the routes well in the secondary, Stafford takes a pretty wild risk, and DeJean makes him pay.
DeJean’s play has stabilized over the past two weeks after a poor start. This interception gave the offense the ball at the Rams’ 35 with 18 seconds left in the half. The Eagles turned it into a touchdown. The defense wasn’t just keeping the score manageable in the first half; it was actively creating scoring opportunities.
I thought Nolan Smith had his best game of the season, and this sack shows his speed making a difference. He aligns extremely wide, times the snap well, and essentially runs past everyone before they can deal with him. When he gets that kind of jump, the width gives him room to build speed and attack the edge.
However, the alignment also captures something odd about the Eagles’ pass rush in this game. At times, it felt like the widest of wide 9s. I would love to see the actual alignment data (if anyone knows where to find it, let me know) because, on other snaps, the edges seemed miles away from Stafford. If they cannot win quickly around the corner and there is no interior push, that leaves the quarterback with a lot of space. Smith makes it work here, but I was not convinced the extreme width helped the rush consistently. It was very noticeable.
I criticized Jordan Davis a little bit last week, so it is only fair to highlight that he made multiple dominant plays against the run here. He got off double teams all game long and finished the play. That is the part I always want to see from elite defensive tackles. Occupying two blockers is valuable, but getting free and making the tackle is better!
Ty Robinson causing chaos, yet again. You have to enjoy it. The best part of this rep, though, is Nolan Smith’s rush. He gets a clean two-way go, meaning he has room to threaten either side of the tackle, and uses it properly. He sells the upfield rush, forces the tackle to overset, and then cuts inside. By his third step, he is already winning. That’s what you need to see from pass rushers. Aim to win the rep by the third step.
That is the kind of quick pressure I have not seen enough from the Eagles’ edge rushers this year. It does not require a stunt to come all the way around or a teammate to create the opening. Smith threatens the blocker, gets the response he wants, and attacks it immediately. More of this, please.
And yes, I am still annoyed about the lack of intentional grounding here. I know it is the rule. But it’s laughable. The running back is on the floor! Are we supposed to pretend that is a legitimate throw to the running back? Come on.
This rep disappointed me from Tariq Woolen. When the priority is preventing a big play, you cannot give Nacua this much room and allow a gain of around 30 yards. I do not like judging players by body language, especially because Woolen had some good reps in this game, but this looks a little too casual. It feels like he is trusting his recovery speed to solve a problem he should be preventing earlier.
Nacua worked him several times in this game. Nacua is an excellent player, but Woolen is supposed to be an excellent cornerback too. A defense built around making an offense work patiently cannot keep surrendering chunks like this.
Campbell’s biggest coverage issue in this game was getting through traffic. The Rams repeatedly sent receivers toward the outside and made him work through bodies to reach his assignment. Too often, he ran into a cornerback or a receiver and struggled to get himself free. This is not a case of him simply lacking the speed to cover in space. He has the athleticism.
Sean McVay spotted it and kept coming back to it. Imagine that: finding something that works and calling it again! However, the Eagles didn’t help out Campbell at all either. The Eagles played a ton of Cover 2 by Fangio’s standards. That was really unusual for him. Often, this was a split coverage, with Cover 2 man on the weak side and Cover 2 zone on the strong side. That frequently left Campbell as the weakside linebacker, responsible for a tight end or running back in man coverage. McVay recognized what Fangio was doing and repeatedly called route combinations that forced Campbell to work through traffic to stay with his receiver and make the tackle. Campbell could not do it consistently. You can rightly criticize his execution, but you also have to credit McVay for identifying how the coverage worked, finding the matchup he wanted, and adjusting his calls to keep attacking it.
I do not think his coverage is as hopeless as some of the reaction suggests. He is often close, but a beat late, and against this offense that is enough. This is why I would consider a rotation with Trotter. Campbell still needs opportunities to improve, but Trotter deserves to be rewarded. The Eagles are trying to win games while developing players, and there has to be room for both.
I am gutted for Trotter on this one. He reads the play perfectly, gets himself into position, and then whiffs. It happens. That doesn’t erase the rest of his performance, but it is a brutal moment. He finished with 15 combined tackles, and so much of his game was built on recognizing the threat quickly and arriving where he needed to be. Here, the recognition is right, but he just whiffs.
The other issue is the pursuit. Hunt and Michael Carter could rally to the football quicker. They seem to expect Trotter to finish the tackle, but the rest of the defense has to keep moving in case he doesn’t. You cannot stop playing because a teammate is in a good position. One missed tackle should not automatically leave the offense with room to keep going. There were still too many missed tackles in this game, and the response around them needs to be better as well.
Final Thoughts
The Eagles had allowed 10 points when the Rams took over at their own 2-yard line with 7:26 remaining. They then surrendered touchdown drives of 98 and 79 yards, with a short offensive possession between them. That’s rough. For all the good individual plays, the defense couldn’t make Stafford uncomfortable or get the stop that would have ended the game.
I do think fatigue had an impact. An offense that cannot convert a single third down makes life harder for everyone, and this defense had already done plenty to give the Eagles a chance. But the pass rush still has to win more often, and the tackling has to hold up. You cannot explain away those last two drives entirely by pointing at the offense.
This is not a great defense right now, and expecting it to carry the entire team every week is too much to ask. The offense has to get its act together. These losses will keep coming until it does.
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