Can the Eagles defense still fly high?

Yahoo

3 days ago

Yahoo Sports NFL analyst Nate Tice and NFL writer Charles McDonald discuss Philadelphia's approach with an up-and-coming young defense that lost a couple of key pieces following last season's Super Bowl run. Hear the full conversation on 'Football 301' - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
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Video Transcript
Philadelphia Eagles, Charles, why do you have him as your number one defense?
Other than that, they were the number one defense last year and they won the Super Bowl.
And they, I mean, it's a pretty easy argument to make as well.
It's easy to make, but it's also not quite the same defense, you know, they've lost some guys on the defensive line.
They've lost Milton Williams, who signed that massive deal with New England.
Josh Sweat is in Arizona, but you look at their defense, right?
And it's just littered with first and second round picks all over the place, right?
The defensive line still is, you know, all the Georgia guys, they've really started to develop.
Jordan Davis, I think we'll see what happens this year.
He's gotten into incredible shape.
Contract year, Jordan Davis could be special.
We'll see.
Jaylen Carter, we know about that.
But Nolan Smith, like when I was skimming through some of my stuff, he has really improved from where he was when he first got into the NFL.
Like he was all over the place in the Super Bowl.
You get to bring back Zach Vaughan.
Like we're talking about a 7-2 Scott Bonner, who was an absolute assassin last year.
And sometimes you get these years from linebackers where like, oh, they put up a lot of numbers, but it's pretty manufactured.
No, he actually played really, really good football last year.
And then we got Quinnen Mitchell on the outside, who's an absolute stud.
Cooper DeJean, who's an absolute stud.
But they have so many guys on this defense still.
I still think they're going to be the best defense in the league because a lot of those guys are so young.
Like a lot of these guys are still in their rookie deals or first or second year players.
These guys are going to get better.
So I'm really excited to see what the next step of all those guys they've drafted in the last two years looks like in year three, because there's hard proof of concept that these are potentially Pro Bowl talented NFL players and they're so young.
I just want to see what's next for them.
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