Can you just imagine what those phone calls were like?
Jim Johnson and Vic Fangio just chatting about defense?
Once upon a time those two great football minds, two of the finest defensive coaches the NFL has seen over the last generation, were contemporaries.
They never worked together, but their teams faced each other from 1985 in the USFL to the late 2000s when both were top defensive coordinators.
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“Jim and I were professional friends,” Fangio said Tuesday. “Not much right now, but back then you'd have a couple guys (around the league) that you would talk to. If you're playing somebody this week that maybe it's not in your division, you haven't played in a while, and you want to call somebody that has more familiarity with them.
“Jim and I would do that back and forth with each other, me for him, him for me. And so got to know him that way. And we had what I would consider a very good professional relationship and kind of saw the game the same way to a degree.”
Fangio and Johnson go back to 1985, when both were coaching in the old USFL, Fangio with the Philly and Baltimore Stars and Johnson with the Birmingham Stallions and Jacksonville Bulls.
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And there’s so much of Jim Johnson’s personality, wisdom and humor in Vic Fangio it’s uncanny.
Johnson was a quiet, gentle guy, but he coached hard, and he earned instant respect from his players because he was honest and open, he knew how to get the most out of everyone on the roster and he was a brilliant judge of talent.
Johnson was 100 percent no-nonsense. No BS, no beating around the bush. If a guy was struggling, he didn’t hide it. He’d shoot you straight every time.
You could say all those same things about Fangio.
The same long careers with countless stops before arriving in Philly. The same blunt, no-BS attitude. The same remarkable judge of talent. The same honesty with their players. The same slightly sarcastic sense of humor.
Both are closely linked to Hall of Famers - Sam Mills and Rickey Jackson for Fangio, Aeneas Williams and Brian Dawkins for Johnson.
And most importantly, they both inherited struggling defenses when they arrived in Philly and got things turned around in a hurry.
And most importantly, in the impact they made as soon as they joined the Eagles.
Johnson inherited a mess his first year with the Eagles. The 1998 team had gone 3-13 in Ray Rhodes’ final season, and the Eagles took their lumps in 1999 as well, in Andy Reid’s first season. The low point was an ugly 44-17 loss to the Colts – with Fangio on the staff – late in the season at the Vet.
But by the end of the season you could see that something special was happening. They allowed just 18.8 points in their last five games, a sign of what was to come over the next decade. From 2000 through 2008, the Eagles had six top-5 defenses and they carried the Eagles to five NFC Championship Games and a Super Bowl.
Last year?
The Eagles were 26th in the NFL in yards allowed last year under Sean Desai and then Matt Patricia, as well as 30th in points allowed, 31st on third down, 31st in pass defense.
It was a disaster.
And here we are 10 games into Fangio’s coaching tenure and they’re No. 1 in yards allowed, 5th in points allowed, 8th on third down, 2nd in pass defense.
It’s been an astonishing turnaround, and the parallels between Johnson in the early 2000s and Fangio this year are impossible to ignore down to both teams having a young linebacker named Jeremiah Trotter.
Fangio is a lot older than Johnson was when he got here, and he won’t stay for a decade like Jim did. But the almost instantaneous impact he’s made on the organization is similar.
Nearly every year Johnson was here, the Eagles were Super Bowl contenders. And in Fangio’s first season, they’re 8-2 with a six-game winning streak, first place in the NFC East and a defense that’s allowed six touchdowns in its last six games.
A lot of franchises don’t get a guy like this ever. The Eagles got two. Jim and Vic aren’t the same guy, although sometimes it sure seems like they are.
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