For the second time in three years, the Philadelphia Eagles are back in the Super Bowl.
The team is quite a bit different this time around, but many of the differences are well known. Saquon Barkley is a major part of the offense, for example. The secondary has been entirely remade, with two rookies — Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean — playing starring roles. Center Jason Kelce isn’t on the field anymore, but Cam Jurgens has stepped in and played at a high level. The defensive front has added players like Jalen Carter and Nolan Smith, who have been dominant forces on this run.
But we’re not here to talk about those types of additions. We’re here to spotlight more under-the-radar moves that helped the Eagles get to where they are right now — on the verge of potentially breaking up the first three-peat in NFL history.
Switching coordinators
Last year, the Eagles came into the season with new offensive and defensive coordinators after losing Shane Steichen and Jonathan Gannon to head-coaching jobs in Indianapolis and Arizona respectively. But the experiments with Brian Johnson and Sean Desai didn’t work, and the team fell apart over the second half of the season. Yet the Eagles didn’t just run it back and hope things got better. They went out and replaced their coordinators again, on both sides of the ball. Kellen Moore and Vic Fangio’s units have been among the best in the league all season, and their ability to get the best out of their players has played a key role in getting Philly back here.
A third-round pick back in 2021, Williams has become an increasingly important part of Philly’s defense. He played a career-high 48% of the defensive snaps this season, and he picked up career highs in both sacks (5) and quarterback hits (10). He doesn’t get a lot of attention on the star-studded defensive line, but he’s a really good player.
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Bryan DeArdo
Signing Baun is officially no longer an under-the-radar move. He’s a Defensive Player of the Year finalist. But the big key to that has gone undersold. They turned an edge rusher — an edge rusher who mostly played special teams because he wasn’t effective rushing off the edge — into a middle linebacker! That’s a transition that basically never happens, but Baun did it with relative ease and in such a way that he was one of the small handful of best defenders in the entire league.
Speaking of position switches … Becton was drafted to be a star left tackle for the Jets yet issues with injuries, weight and conditioning kept him off the field for most of his tenure in New York. The Eagles signed him for a song this past offseason and moved him to right guard, and the rest is history. He’s played in 17 of 20 total games to date and was on the field for 88% of regular-season snaps. And he’s played really well!
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