Jordan Davis found his voice and helped stabilize the Eagles’ defensive line

Last year, Jordan Davis was often not in the room.

Reporters are typically inside the Eagles’ locker room three days per week for 45 minutes during the regular season, but Davis would typically be anywhere else in the building but at his locker stall. Who could blame him? He was a third-year defensive tackle whose playing time had been cut down, who wasn’t in good enough shape.

Vic Fangio’s defense was ascending, but Davis, the 13th overall pick in 2022, was mostly an afterthought. The Eagles had Jalen Carter and Milton Williams leading the way in the interior, a group of edge rushers that got after opposing quarterbacks, revelations at linebacker in Nakobe Dean and Zack Baun, and two rookies in the secondary, Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean, who made an immediate impact.

Then there was Davis, who was basically just one of the guys, a rotational defensive tackle who wasn’t overly interested in talking about the ups and downs and all that comes with not living up to your perceived potential.

This year? It’s hard to miss Davis. He is often the loudest voice in the room, bouncing around and joking with his teammates. He holds court in front of cameras at his locker. He is one of the faces and voices of a defense that hasn’t allowed a touchdown in 20 consecutive drives.

Davis, who turns 26 next month, is having his best season. His weight loss and body change — Davis fell in love with Peloton workouts and lost 26 pounds in the offseason — has been well documented, but Davis also has found his voice. It’s all connected.

“I had to make sure that everything around me was good,” Davis said Wednesday. “Had to make sure my body was right, I was living right, before I could really speak my voice. I’ve been this way since I got here, but now I think everybody is kind of just rallying behind me because they’ve seen the work that’s been put in, they’ve seen the work that’s being put in daily, and they see the consistency.

“It’s one thing to just hear it from a voice. But it’s another thing when he’s really believing, when he’s really living it, and he’s making decisions, making progress in terms of the way he wants to live his life.”

» READ MORE: Ally Love helped Jordan Davis lose weight on the Peloton. Now, she’s his biggest fan.

This Davis, the one the public gets to see more, has always been there, Davis said.

“I’ve always been happy-go-lucky, always been jovial,” he said. “It’s just now everyone is seeing it because I’m so confident in the person I am.”

Baun can see the changes in Davis, and he recognizes where it has come from because he saw the same thing with his own path last year. Baun was sort of at a crossroads when the Eagles signed him to a one-year deal. Was he an edge rusher? Was he a linebacker? Would he be a special teamer and backup?

Fangio thought he’d work best as an off-ball linebacker — and was right — but it wasn’t until Baun got into a groove that the then-27-year-old on a young defense felt comfortable being a leader.

“I think it happens to anyone, even not playing a sport,” Baun said. “As soon as you start feeling more confident in yourself — for him, whether it was playing better or losing weight and then playing better — then you start adding stuff to your plate. But you have to take care of yourself and do what you need to do first. Then you can be a leader."

Defensive tackle Byron Young said he began to notice a change in Davis toward the end of last year when he started to lose weight. Davis struggled for large stretches of the 2024 season. After Week 14, he played more than 18 snaps in a game just once, in Week 18, when the Eagles were playing their backups. Davis’ work on himself had already started, and his confidence, Young said, “was obvious.”

Despite his limited workload, Davis produced. He had three pressures and a sack in the NFC championship game, then another sack in the Super Bowl.

Davis then showed up for training camp with a new body, a new level of confidence, and a bigger voice.

“He always has so much more energy,” Young said. “He’s able to be himself out there because he’s not worried about being tired all the time. He’s been a lot more vocal, a lot more of himself, and that’s something that’s good to see. You want to see guys being confident and being themselves.”

» READ MORE: From September: Jordan Davis has ascended into an every-down role for the Eagles: ‘He’s not living in a box anymore’

Davis is usually joking around in the locker room, but he knows when to turn it off and get serious, Young said. Other times he might need a gentle reminder from defensive line coach Clint Hurtt.

Davis’ energy has a domino effect, Young said.

“It feeds into everybody else because everybody else feels how confident he is in himself and how confident he is in everyone else,” Young said. “Then you see how much fun he has when he’s out there playing, it makes everyone have fun. I think it’s something that has helped our defense a lot this year.”

Rewind to the start of training camp. Williams left in free agency for a big payday, and the Eagles didn’t do much in the way of backfilling. Now imagine Carter missing games in the homestretch of the season. Back then, scary hypothetical. Now, with Carter recovering from procedures on his shoulders, the emergence of Davis and Moro Ojomo has the defensive line barely missing Carter’s presence.

Nolan Smith sacked Kenny Pickett on Sunday, but he was one-on-one in part because of the bodies Davis occupied in the middle of the line. A week earlier vs. the Los Angeles Chargers, Davis tallied a career-high six pressures, according to Pro Football Focus. It was the first game that Davis registered more than four pressures in a game, and he’s already at 23 pressures on the season, eight more than he had in all of 2024.

The body change enabled Davis to morph from a run-stuffer first into a more well-rounded tackle. It probably helped him elevate on his game-winning field goal block back in Week 3, too.

“I think he’s definitely taken a step,” Baun said. “He’s confident in himself and he knows the plays he can make, what he’s good at, what he’s not good at, and he’s taking advantage.”

Davis took a more intentional approach with him into the 2025 season, he said.

“This year,” Davis said, “I was like, ‘All right, I’m the oldest guy in the room. I got to do something different. I want to do something different so I can be different, so I can lead different.’ This was just the year to do it, and hopefully there are many more years to come.”

The Eagles picked up Davis’ fifth-year option in the offseason, keeping him under team control through the 2026 season. Davis has spent the 2025 season making that decision look like the right one, and probably earning himself a lot of money on his next deal in the process.

He’s played in all 14 games and has six pass deflections, 4½ sacks, 59 tackles (seven for losses), and six quarterback hits. He has played 62% of the defensive snaps after only playing 37% last season. All of those numbers are career-highs. Davis has a legitimate Pro Bowl case.

Has he stopped at all to ruminate in all that’s happened over the past year?

“Reflection comes at the end,” Davis said. “For right now, just keep chugging. Keep trucking.”

When the time to reflect comes, you’ll know where to find him. He won’t be hiding.