Eagles' defense shows off its identity in win over Ravens

BALTIMORE — Cooper DeJean was honest.

“I didn’t really expect to pick him up like that,” the 21-year-old rookie said.

Yeah, no one did. Of course they didn’t. You don’t just pick up a 250-pound freak of nature and pummel him into the ground. No one does that to King Henry.

But DeJean did.

On a 3rd-and-11 in the fourth quarter, Lamar Jackson dumped the ball off to Derrick Henry in the flat and DeJean made a play that will live on the highlight reel for a long time.

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Cooper DeJean takes down Derrick Henry 💪

📺: #PHIvsBAL on CBS/Paramount+
📱: https://t.co/waVpO909ge pic.twitter.com/Lwq9S0PfZo

— NFL (@NFL) December 2, 2024

“I was kind of just doing my job, coming down to make a tackle,” DeJean said after the 24-19 win. “Trying to run through him. He’s a pretty big dude, though. I felt it a little bit, for sure. But a lot of adrenaline running. I was just playing my coverage, came down to make the hit.”

That was just one highlight but it embodied what this Eagles defense is all about. 

In one word? Physicality.

This is a physical Eagles football team. On offense, they beat you up in the run game and on defense they punish you for stepping foot on the field. The Eagles were facing the best offense in the NFL on Sunday afternoon and Vic Fangio’s unit turned in another stellar performance.

“Yeah, our identity is (being) physical,” linebacker Zack Baun said. “And if you’re going to challenge that, then we’re going to show up and be more physical.” 

The Ravens ended up with 372 yards on offense Sunday and that looks like a lot. But the Eagles’ defense was pretty dominant. They gave up a last-second touchdown that made this game look closer than it was and they held the No. 1 red zone offense to a 2-for-5 performance on Sunday.

But what stood out most was that physicality on all three levels. Up front, Jalen Carter, Milton Williams, Josh Sweat, Nolan Smith, Jordan Davis all had big games. At linebacker, Baun and Nakobe Dean were flying to the ball. And on the back end, DeJean, Quinyon Mitchell, Reed Blankenship and C.J. Gardner-Johnson all delivered big hits.

Where does this physicality come from?

There are some theories.

“I think a lot of guys on this defense and this team have been underdogs for a long time, having a chip on their shoulder,” Baun said. “I know I have, and I know Nakobe has, and a lot of these linebackers also. And just playing aggressive. We want to grind on teams, and we want to wear them out and that’s what we did.”

DeJean said physicality gets preached during the week by the coaching staff and players care about it.

It’s their goal every single week to be more physical than their opponent.

“I think it just comes from everybody,” DeJean said. “We understand that that’s what we want to be. We want to be the most physical team on the field every week. That starts in practice, wearing pads on Wednesday, going through our tackle circuit so we can go out and play physical on Sundays.”

Early in the season, the Eagles were missing tackles at an alarming rate but those issues have disappeared. In a game against Henry and Jackson, two guys known for making defenders miss, the Eagles simply didn’t. They rallied to the ball and finished when they got there.

In his postgame press conference, Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni didn’t seem to appreciate the wording of one question. 

He was asked if the Eagles matched the Ravens’ physicality.

“They had to match ours,” Sirianni said. “We know we are a physical team, we know they are a physical team. That was our message going in, that they have to match our physicality. Again, that’s a very physical team. That’s a well-coached team. That’s a team with a lot of good players.”

But the Eagles on Sunday were better. And they were more physical, which is now the expectation.

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