Dolphins star blasting new Eagles DC Vic Fangio is great news for Cowboys

The Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles will once again fight tooth and nail for the NFC East crown in 2024. In fairness, the Eagles have run circles around the Cowboys this offseason. They spent a lot of money in free agency (some of it misguided) and agreed to extensions with multiple core pieces.

The Cowboys should take a page out of their rival's playbook. By extending wide receivers A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith, Philly made the Cowboys look even more foolish for waiting to sign CeeDee Lamb, who isn't at OTAs and might not report to Dallas until he gets a new deal.

While the Eagles are the gold standard of front office work, it's impossible to say where they are mentally following their late-season collapse. The locker room clearly wasn't in a good place and head coach Nick Sirianni seemingly wasn't getting through to his players.

A full offseason should help the Eagles rediscover their swagger, but the hiring of Vic Fangio as defensive coordinator might actually be bad news for an already-edgy locker room.

When asked about new DC Anthony Weaver, Dolphins safety Jevon Holland raved about Weaver's ability to connect with players. Holland called it a "complete 180" compared to Fangio and said the biggest difference between the two coordinators is that Weaver is "a good person."

Eagles' Vic Fangio hire could work out in the Cowboys' favor

Coaches and players don't always see eye to eye in professional sport, but you almost never see a player come down on a coach the way Holland did. Fangio's coaching style clearly didn't resonate with the Dolphins, which would explain why they finished 16th in points allowed per possession and 24th in takeaways despite having talent all over the field.

It's certainly possible that the Eagles will buy in to Fangio's old-school style of coaching, but what happens when adversity strikes? How will players on the defense respond to getting scolded on the sideline? We saw how Philadelphia performed last season in the face of adversity. They folded like a deck of cards despite having a stranglehold on the division in the final month.

Fangio's hard and hands-on style might grow stale if the defense doesn't produce. While the Eagles made seismic changes to their personnel, let's not forget they ranked 30th in points per possession and 31st in yards per possession in 2023. They were a bottom-barrel defense across the board.

Fangio's reputation as a defensive coordinator speaks for itself, but it's notable that a hot-headed coach like Fangio is now a prominent voice in an Eagles locker room that proved time and time again last season that it couldn't navigate adversity.

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