The education of Eagles rookie Cooper DeJean continued against Adam Thielen and the Panthers

You have to cast a wide net to find a local NFL team to root for in Odebolt, Iowa. For Cooper DeJean, it meant looking 275 miles north to Minneapolis.

The Eagles’ rookie cornerback was 10 years old when the Vikings invited an undrafted wide receiver named Adam Thielen to training camp in 2013. As an eighth grader, DeJean watched Thielen emerge as a bona fide star, earning All-Pro honors in 2017 while catching 91 passes for 1,276 yards and leading the 13-3 Vikings to an NFC championship showdown with the Eagles. In a lot of ways, they blossomed together, each in his own corner of the Midwest. As Thielen established himself as one of the most dependable wide receivers in the NFL, DeJean became a two-way high school star and earned a scholarship to play at Iowa.

So, yeah, Sunday was fun.

» READ MORE: Eagles grades: Jalen Hurts gets the job done; Saquon Barkley breaks a record; defense rides great linebacker play

DeJean cracked a smile when somebody mentioned that word as he stood at his locker and looked back on the education he’d received over the previous 3½ hours. Fun? That’s one way to describe the experience of lining up against Thielen. DeJean did it early and often in Week 14, with Thielen’s nine catches for 102 yards playing a big role in keeping the Carolina Panthers within striking distance up until the final drive of the Eagles’ 22-16 win.

“It was tough,” the 21-year-old DeJean said with a chuckle. “He’s a good player. He’s got a lot of juice. Shifty. Crafty. He’s been doing it for a long time. He knows how to get off coverage when you press him, get open, so it was a good challenge for me.”

Thielen spent much of Sunday giving DeJean the business in vintage fashion. On the Panthers’ third drive, he ran a smooth out-and-up on the right sideline and hauled in a 24-yard completion that gave Carolina a first down on the Eagles’ 23-yard line and set up a field goal. In the second quarter, Thielen beat DeJean with a sharp in-cut on a crossing pattern, hauling in an 11-yard reception on third-and-8 to extend a drive that culminated in a touchdown.

“He’s a tough cover,” DeJean said. “He’s real savvy. Uses his body well. Uses his hands well. Knows how to get off press. It was a good learning experience going up against a veteran receiver like him.”

Experience. It’s an easy thing to overlook with a player like DeJean. Since returning from a summer hamstring injury and establishing himself as the Eagles’ primary slot corner, he and fellow rookie Quinyon Mitchell have made it easy to forget that they are both learning on the fly.

The Eagles entered Sunday having held six of their last eight opponents under 200 net yards passing, the two exceptions coming in the form of 222 yards against the Joe Burrow-led Cincinnati Bengals and 206 yards last week vs. Baltimore and Lamar Jackson. For the first time in months, Vic Fangio’s unit left itself open to critique, with a resurgent Bryce Young looking eminently competent while completing 19 of 34 passes for 191 yards.

Those numbers don’t include what, for a few excruciating moments, looked like a go-ahead 32-yard touchdown catch by Xavier Legette, a Panthers rookie receiver who slipped behind the last level of the Eagles defense and came up with the ball in the end zone before officials ruled that he’d failed to secure the catch. Two plays later, Darius Slay blanketed Thielen on a fourth-and-9 play with 37 seconds left, the pass falling incomplete to stop the Panthers’ last-minute march at the Eagles’ 37-yard-line.

» READ MORE: There’s an easy way to solve the NFL’s dumb MVP debate. Call it the Saquon Barkley Trophy.

“I’ve been playing Thielen for a long time, man,” said Slay, whose seven years with the Detroit Lions coincided with Thielen’s tenure in Minnesota. “It was a good battle. It’s always been.”

Those battles are the kind of thing that DeJean is only beginning to understand. Seven months after the Eagles stole him with the No. 40 overall pick in the draft, the former Iowa star is already an NFL difference-maker. In DeJean’s first eight games as a starter, opposing receivers caught just 36 of 52 targets for 250 yards against him, with Pro Football Focus giving him the 11th-best coverage grade among NFL corners heading into Sunday.

Thielen may have been his toughest test yet.

“Just how savvy he is,” DeJean said. “He knows how to use his body to get open. You’ve got to do a good job of playing physical with him because he likes to be physical when he’s getting open. So you have to bring the fight to him … Every guy you go up against is different. He challenged me a lot today. It will make me better going forward.”

It’s a tantalizing thought, considering how impressive DeJean already is.

» READ MORE: Eagles-Panthers stock watch: C.J. Gardner-Johnson trending up, Jalen Hurts down

“You get an opportunity to learn from everybody you play against,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said. “That’s our job, to make sure that we get better, win, lose, or draw, every time we step on the field and after every time we play and get better from it. Coop has been doing a really good job of that no matter who he goes against. A lot of respect to Adam Thielen and the career he’s put together and the game he played today. A good player.”

You can’t help but think that Sunday was one of the days that will pay serious dividends down the road.