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Eagles’ Vic Fangio knew Zack Baun could play inside linebacker
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Eagles’ Vic Fangio knew Zack Baun could play inside linebacker

The Eagles appear to have the NFL steal of the year in linebacker Zack Baun, but very few could have seen that this coming.

However, Vic Fangio saw something that others may have missed. When Howie Roseman signed the former New Orleans Saints pass rusher and special teams ace, he thought the Eagles would have a cheap and useful backup outside linebacker who would contribute on special teams. The general manager said the same thing to Fangio, the defensive coordinator the Eagles hired six weeks before bringing in Baun.

Fangio thought there was more. It was similar to how Fangio convinced Andrew Van Ginkel last season in Miami that there was more to his game than just being an edge rusher.

“When I evaluate players, there is no check box to check things off,” Fangio said Tuesday. “You just look at the tape, look at the movement patterns, look at the player.

“After I watched the tape, I said I think he’s an inside linebacker. Fortunately, it was a hit.”

Does it ever. Fangio said earlier this season that it’s hard to play good defense in the NFL without getting good linebacker play. Ask the Eagles of old how true that sounds. This year was seemingly a 180 with Baun and Nakobe Dean.

How good has Baun been?

Pro Football Focus numbers aren’t great numbers, but Baun ranks second among NFL linebackers in pass coverage, behind three-time All-Pro Fred Warner of the San Francisco 49ers.

Baun stuffed the stat sheet in Sunday’s win at Dallas, forcing two fumbles and recovering another. That came a week after his only interception of the 2024 season. After ten weeks, Baun ranks eleventh in the NFL and first among the Eagles with 87 tackles, with all but one of the ten players above him on the list still has their bye week.

Not a bad use of $1.6 million.

» READ MORE: Eagles’ Zack Baun, “a superstar, mega-athlete,” continues to grow as an NFL linebacker

Hunt’s improvement and Huff’s injury

Rookie edge rusher Jalyx Hunt saw his most snaps on Sunday with 25 (42%), thanks largely to the Eagles resting their starters during the win and also due to Bryce Huff’s wrist injury.

Fangio said Hunt has improved in practice and earned more snaps. He saw the field for Huff on Sunday, but that may be mainly because the veteran, who has struggled to fulfill his $51.1 million deal thus far, has dealt with the injury in the past two games.

“He has a large cast on his hand, which completely immobilizes his thumb and essentially immobilizes his palm,” Fangio said. “So he just has four fingers dangling there, with no thumb or palm to help him. As for the less obvious negatives, it just makes sense to put a guy in there who is 100%.

» READ MORE: Jalyx Hunt has proven to be a quick study. Could more playing time be on the horizon for the rookie?

Jim Mora’s impact on tackling

According to Next Gen Stats, the Eagles missed 16 tackles while being defeated in their Week 4 loss at Tampa Bay. Nick Sirianni said the day after that one of the deep dives during the bye would be figuring out how the Eagles could get better at tackling, an issue that plagued them during their 2-2 start.

Fangio decided to go back 40 years to something he learned when he first started coaching professional football in 1984.

“When I first started in pro football, I had an old coach who said if you emphasize something, you have a chance to get it,” Fangio said. “That’s what happened there. In addition, we played better overall and the ball was not in the open field as often.”

Who was that coach?

“A man named Jim Mora,” Fangio said.

Mora, of course, won 125 NFL games, but he was the coach of the USFL’s Philadelphia Stars when he hired Fangio.

“Jim, to me, is one of the most underrated and great coaches in the league,” Fangio said. “He just never did much in the playoffs, never really had the whole team to go far, but he was a damn good coach and a guy I always looked up to.”

» READ MORE: Truths from a Phillies diehard: Vic Fangio, the Grizzly Eagles DC and baseball traditionalist, plays it straight

Sun in AT&T Stadium

Two days after a tirade about how the sun affects playing conditions in his billion-dollar stadium, Jerry Jones doubled down on a Dallas radio station Tuesday, saying he thinks the sun shining on the field is part of home field advantage.

It certainly doesn’t seem like it.

On Tuesday, Eagles offensive coordinator Kellen Moore was asked about the sun. Moore was on Dallas’ roster as a backup quarterback from 2015 to 2017, making two starts. He then served as the quarterbacks coach and later as the offensive coordinator until the end of the 2022 season.

“Stadiums all have different conditions,” Moore said. “The sun obviously plays a significant role in that one. You just have to plan the plays accordingly because sometimes it can be a little challenging to know certain parts of the field.”