Vic Fangio remade the Eagles defense and now looks for his elusive Super Bowl title
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Vic Fangio's coaching career started in the 1970s as a high school assistant in Pennsylvania and has taken him across the country in various stops as he grew into one of the most innovative defensive coaches in the game.
Now at age 66, Fangio is at the Super Bowl in New Orleans, where he started his NFL coaching career, as defensive coordinator with the Philadelphia Eagles team he grew up supporting with a chance to fill one of the few remaining gaps on a stellar career.
“I grew up a Philadelphia sports fan,” Fangio said. “Phillies, Eagles, Sixers, started my pro career in Philadelphia with the USFL. And now I’ll probably end it here one of these years. It’s kind of come full circle. ... I kind of fit there.”
Fangio has incorporated eight new starters into a defense that ranked near the bottom of the NFL in 2023 and turned it into one of the league's best as the Eagles led the NFL in advanced efficiency metrics and allowed the second-fewest points in the league.
He is a major reason why the Eagles are in the Super Bowl, giving Fangio the success he couldn't achieve in a failed head coaching stint in Denver and a chance to win his first Super Bowl in 38 seasons in the NFL.
“I still really like to do it. I think I’m still halfway decent at it,” he said. “It’s great. If you hang around long enough the tide will turn.”
Fangio began his NFL career coaching one of the top linebacking groups ever for New Orleans' “Dome Patrol” teams in 1986 and got his first chance as defensive coordinator for expansion Carolina in 1995.
He has spent nearly all of his time since in the NFL, with a one-year break to go to Stanford, and his defensive style that disguises coverages and tries to keep two safeties as deep as possible to limit big plays has been mimicked throughout the league.
His only previous trip to the Super Bowl came in the 2012 season with San Francisco, when he lost to Baltimore here at the Superdome.
“When you talk about coaches, sometimes you're like ‘He’s been a good coach for years.’ He’s very good coach for decades, which is impressive,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said.
“He’s had an unbelievable career and done so many good things and just so grateful that he’s on the staff. He has the standard of how it’s supposed to look and holds the guys to that standard. He’s not afraid to tell you what he thinks if you don’t meet the standard and praise you if you do meet the standards.”
Fangio has been integral in the defensive rebuild in Philadelphia. He saw enough in free agent Zack Baun to turn him from a special teams player who got limited time on defense as an outside rusher in New Orleans into an All-Pro inside linebacker and finalist for AP Defensive Player of the Year in Philadelphia.
He also helped incorporate two rookie starters in the secondary in Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean, which played a big part in the turnaround.
“He’s like a father figure,” Mitchell said. “He’s going to hold you accountable. He’s serious. But he’s got jokes too. He’s funny as well."
But Fangio will face his toughest test on Sunday when the Eagles face Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs.
While much has been made out of Fangio's 0-8 record against Mahomes as a head coach in Denver and play-caller in Miami, he never had a defense as talented as this one when he faced him.
The record diminishes what Fangio did on defense as his teams scored just 11.9 points per game in those games. Fangio's defenses allowed only 21.6 points per game to the Kansas City offense — the Chiefs got six additional TDs on defense and special teams — and Mahomes threw only 10 TD passes in the eight games and had a lower passer rating (95.9) and yards per attempt (7.3) than his career average.
“Every time I've played Coach Fangio, there's been different changeups and different things he's thrown at us,” Mahomes said. “That's what makes him so great. He won’t do what he did the last time.”
Mahomes called games against Fangio a "chess match" and Fangio stressed the importance of changing up schemes because of Mahomes' “elite” ability to understand what a defense is doing both before the snap and after.
“There is no secret. This is his seventh year as a starter. No one has gotten the formula to beat him,” Fangio said. “He’s won the chess match against me, the final score. We’ll see if there's something we can come up with.”
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