Nakobe Dean and Zack Baun’s linebacker partnership carries the Eagles to a nervy win

Roughly 25 minutes after the final whistle, Nakobe Dean was still holding onto the ball with which he called game.

It was a too-close-for-comfort victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars, one that necessitated Dean to play the hero Sunday with a leaping interception in the front corner of the end zone to seal the 28-23 win late in the fourth quarter and vault the Eagles to 6-2.

Picking up Jaguars running back D’Ernest Johnson on a wheel route destined for the front pylon and making the full-extension grab, Dean said he expected Jacksonville’s play call before the snap. That’s because he’d seen the Eagles run it before. He’d even seen the Eagles run it against him before.

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“I got beat on it in training camp because of Kenny Gainwell, so I had seen it quite a bit,” Dean said. “I remembered it from college, got beat on it a couple times in practice, too. So I was kind of waiting on it.

“I remember, after I got beat on it, talking to Kenny and Jalen [Hurts] in training camp. That’s the primary route. So I knew, if he liked the matchup, he was going to throw it.”

Dean’s full-circle moment came almost exactly three months removed from his worst practice of the summer haplessly coming in the team’s lone public practice at Lincoln Financial Field. On Sunday, Dean showed the type of growth that eluded him throughout the first two years of his career, starring alongside his position-mate Zack Baun to lead the Eagles defense to another strong performance.

“You go in before the season starts and you think you’re a smart player and you know a lot of things,” Dean said. “Then you start going through things that never happened to you on the field. So you just continue to learn from that and continue to grow from it.”

Dean and Baun each finished the victory with an interception. Baun’s came late in the second quarter with an assist from Dean, who was in coverage on Jaguars running back Travis Etienne as he bobbled the ball into the air for Baun to come up with. Making a diving catch, Baun flipped the ball to Dean after the play. It was a nod to Dean doing the same to him a week earlier, following a forced fumble against the Cincinnati Bengals recovered by Dean.

Getting his first extended stretch of playing time since college, Dean is finally flashing the potential he showcased as a standout at Georgia who surprisingly slid to the third round of the 2022 NFL draft. Dean finished Sunday with two total tackles, one for a loss, and two pass breakups while making his eighth start in as many games as an emerging leader on the Eagles defense.

“I think one thing that makes Nakobe special is just his mind and his leadership,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said. “He’s constantly working on that. I’m walking downstairs one evening late and he’s still in there watching tape. He’s got a special work ethic, which allows him to make special plays like he did today.”

While Dean’s play turned out to be the most pivotal, even he acknowledged he spent most of the evening getting outshone by Baun.

“It was good to call game,” Dean said. “And I wasn’t doing much else that game. I don’t know how many tackles I had.”

Baun, 27, finished the game with a team-high 10 total tackles and broke up two passes. He was crucial on the Jaguars’ opening drive, batting down a pass intended for Jacksonville tight end Evan Engram on first down and making a tackle near the line of scrimmage on the next play.

A converted edge rusher who signed with the Eagles in the offseason, Baun has made noticeable strides at the heart of the defense this season to make up half of the Eagles’ improbably impactful linebacking partnership.

“He’s just a really good athlete,” Sirianni said. “I know he was a great special-teams player with the Saints and did some of the things that we’re doing with him now, but he’s such a good athlete. He gets guys down in the open field, he makes great tackles, he’s taking the ball away with special plays — that catch was a really good catch.”

“The work you do in the dark shows up in the light,” Sirianni added. “I really see that with those two guys and all the work that they put in.”

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There were a few hiccups for the defense, but the group allowed touchdowns on just two of Jacksonville’s 10 drives — excluding their kneel-down before halftime — and forced the two turnovers thanks to the duo at the center of it all.

The timing of those two drives, sandwiched between a Saquon Barkley fumble returned for a Jags touchdown, caused the game to tighten going into the final two minutes.

Dean, who said the team kept a “fighter mentality” as the Jaguars mounted their comeback, delivered the final punch.

By the end of next week, the ball Dean was carrying after the game will find its way to the Eagles’ linebacker room despite being his first career interception. It’s a tradition adopted by the group last week with the ball Baun punched out against the Bengals, one that serves as motivation to add to the pile.

“We’ve got this thing now, we’re putting all our takeaway balls in the linebacker room,” Dean said. “ … Because we’ve just been harping on it, like, ‘Man, we need to take the ball away.’ And we finally started taking the ball away.”