The Eagles defense has immense upside, though questions about Jonathan Greenard and Riq Woolen linger
Given the health questions about Greenard and uncertainty inherent in Woolen, defensive coordinator Vic Fangio could need another few weeks of runway before his defense reaches its full stride.
The most notable thing about the latest round of Eagles’ press conferences was Vic Fangio’s cautious tone when asked about the two newcomers who will determine the ceiling of his defense.
The first instance concerned Jonathan Greenard, whom the Eagles handed a four-year, $98 million contract extension after losing Jaelan Phillips to the Panthers. While the team has betrayed little concern regarding the pectoral strain that has sidelined the veteran defensive end since before training camp, Fangio didn’t go out of his way to reassure fans that Greenard will be ready for the season opener.
“We aren’t going to see him for another couple of weeks, at least,” the defensive coordinator said last week.
Your interpretation of that statement depends a lot on how you weigh the phrase, “at least.” Some might hear a coach who is timing Greenard’s return for the start of the week leading up to the Eagles’ Sept. 13 season opener against the Commanders. Others might instead train their angst on the uncertainty. Rarely does the phrase “at least” carry a hopeful connotation.
Even less clear is where Fangio’s heart was in assessing new cornerback Tariq Woolen. The Eagles’ signing of Woolen to a one-year, $12 million contract spoke volumes about their assessment of last year’s disappointing campaign. While the vast majority of the public attention has focused (rightly) on an offense that looked like a shadow of its previous year’s self, the Eagles clearly felt the same about the downgrade from Darius Slay to Adoree’ Jackson in the secondary. While $12 million is a small price to pay relative to the potential market worth of Woolen’s talent, it is also a lot more than Jackson was paid last season on a veteran minimum deal worth up to $5 million, per reports.
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General manager Howie Roseman consistently operates with the notion that potential salary cap dollars should be measured by how good you are at one position now vs. how much better you will become given expenditure X or Y. That logic precipitated the Eagles’ decision to sign Saquon Barkley to a contract that didn’t necessarily adhere to the current groupthink about running back value. The move to sign Woolen was an admission of how much better the Eagles think they would have been last year, and how much better they will be this year, with a legitimate outside cornerback to start opposite Quinyon Mitchell. That tells you all you need to know about Woolen’s importance to this team.
“At times he can get a little lazy or sloppy with his technique and have a bad down or two, but he’s still showing everything that I think he can do,” Fangio said of Woolen. “He’s just got to get in such great shape and calloused to football that those don’t happen.”
You could write off the comment as innocuous if it didn’t echo a lot of what came out of Seattle during the end of Woolen’s tenure there. One need spend only a day in the presence of Woolen to walk away convinced that Roseman and Fangio landed themselves a steal this offseason. The 26-year-old is as imposing a physical specimen as has ever played cornerback at a chiseled 6-foot-4 and 210 pounds with remarkable limb length. His All-Pro selection as a rookie in 2022 wasn’t a fluke.
At the same time, one would be foolish to completely discount what the market says when it values such a player for what the Eagles were able to sign him. Woolen is coming off a season in which the eventual Super Bowl champs jettisoned him from the starting lineup and then, after said Super Bowl victory, let him walk as a free agent for a pittance.
Woolen is as big of a wild card as exists on the Eagles roster. That’s not a criticism. What makes his range of outcomes so broad is the high end potential. Woolen at his best has been more of an impact player than Slay was at the tail end of his Eagles career, when he was good enough to start for a dominant Super Bowl defense. The Eagles are coming off a season in which they allowed an opposing receiver to gain 99 or more yards in five of their first seven games. That CeeDee Lamb, Puka Nacua, Courtland Sutton, Emeka Egbuka and Jordan Addison were all able to accomplish the feat is even more remarkable given the level Mitchell played at last season.
Greenard factors in here, too. The Eagles were desperate enough on the edge last season that Brandon Graham came out of retirement to become a true value add. The acquisition of Phillips at the trade deadline was a massive stabilizer, particularly defending the run. The Eagles defense was still one of the best units in the NFL. But their playoff loss to the 49ers was a microcosm of the season. That is, a game that was decided by a handful of plays that the 2025 defense was not in the habit of allowing.
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There are lots of reasons to think this year’s Eagles will be closer to 2025, even given the questions about Woolen and Greenard. Their decision to hand Jalen Carter a massive contract extension is a good indication in their confidence that the fourth-year defensive tackle will be back to his dominant self after some midseason shoulder troubles. Edge Jalyx Hunt looks poised to take another big leap forward. Mitchell and Cooper DeJean are still in the exponential growth phases of their careers.
That said, in today’s NFL, a team is only as good as its weakest link, particularly when a weak link in the secondary is paired with a less-than-elite pass rush.
There is no need to raise alarms with either Greenard or Woolen. Roseman’s recent decision-making has earned him the benefit of the doubt. Fangio’s first two years have shown his brilliance in making things work as the season unfolds. The schedule sets up nicely in that regard.
The Commanders will enter the season with a new offensive coordinator and a quarterback who will have played just five games in the previous calendar year. They could also potentially have a new left tackle, after five-time Pro Bowler Laremy Tunsil suffered a triceps tear in practice last week.
Washington has done surprisingly little to build on Jayden Daniels’ promising rookie season in 2024. The last Commanders receiver besides Terry McLaurin to gain 800 or more yards in a season was Pierre Garçon, who did it in 2016, three years before the Commanders drafted McLaurin. There are high school graduates who weren’t born when Garçon was a rookie. Newly signed Stefon Diggs still carries name value, and he is coming off a 1,000-yard season with the Patriots. But there is a reason the 33-year-old was available until the last moment and only then landed a contract with slightly more of a one-year guarantee than Juaun Jennings landed to be the Vikings’ third receiver.
In Week 2, the Eagles travel to Tennessee, where they’ll face another new coaching regime. Titans offensive coordinator Brian Daboll inspired little fear in the Eagles during his tenure with the Giants. This time, he has even less talent, with quarterback Cam Ward entering his sophomore season as likely to get Josh Rosen’ed as to get a contract extension down the road.
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The immediate schedule means the Eagles defense will have a comfortable margin for error while easing into 2026. Granted, there are few unofficial bye weeks in the NFL. But the Eagles’ opening weeks are about as favorable as a team can hope when coming off an 11-6 season. They opened last season at home against the Cowboys and faced the Rams sandwiched around a road Super Bowl rematch in Kansas City. Two years ago brought the Packers in Brazil followed by the Falcons — maybe not a gauntlet, but a couple of teams with enough talent to rack up 400 or more yards of offense against an early-season defense.
Given the health questions about Greenard and uncertainty inherent in Woolen, Fangio could need another few weeks of runway before his defense reaches its full stride. But the upside is immense, and Greenard and Woolen are two of the biggest reasons to bet on the Eagles reaching their potential. Perhaps Fangio’s understanding of this is the real source of his caution.
