How Eagles shored up a huge defensive weak spot after the bye

As the Eagles entered their early Week 5 bye, there was no question they had a serious problem on defense: Missed tackles.

But since the bye week, they have really cleaned it up.

After missing 33 tackles (8.25 per game) through the first four weeks of the season, the Eagles have just missed 11 (3.67 per game) in the three games since that early Week 5 bye.

“We held each other accountable,” middle linebacker Nakobe Dean said. “We’ve been doing tackling drills. We know we’re supposed to tackle. I start that with me. We linebackers, we’re supposed to make every tackle. We’ve just been harping in it. It’s something that’s critical, that we know we got to do, we’re supposed to do it. It’s a fundamental of the game. You’ve got to tackle. We’ve got to just continue to tackle and get better every week.”

In Sunday’s win against the Bengals in Cincinnati, the Eagles had just two total missed tackles after having just 4 against the Giants and 5 against the Browns.

What happened?

“Just better play overall by the whole defense,” Fangio said. “In some of those earlier games, we had running backs getting through the second and third level too easily and those are hard tackles. I think we played better overall.”

Right before the bye, the Eagles suffered their worst loss of the young season by a score of 33-16 to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and missed a ton of tackles at Raymond James Stadium. That felt like a tipping point.

Next Gen Stats charged the Eagles with 16 missed tackles for an additional 105 yards. The Eagles counted 15 themselves. And ProFootballFocus charged them with 10. Missed tackles are a subjective stat, but no matter who was counting, the Eagles were giving up way too many through the first four weeks of the season.

“A lot of times, we left our feet too early,” defensive coordinator Vic Fangio said on Oct. 1 after the loss in Tampa. “Sometimes, we didn’t wrap up well enough. We missed 15 tackles by our count and that’s way too many.”

Coming back from the bye week, the Eagles had a newfound emphasis on tackling and even added a few new wrinkles to the way they work on tackling in practice.

Is all that stuff helping?

“I think any time you emphasize something in practice it's going to get better,” Fangio said.

Here’s a look at the Eagles’ missed tackles by week in the 2024 season, per PFF:

Week 1: 9
Week 2: 12
Week 3: 2
Week 4: 10
Week 5: BYE
Week 6: 5
Week 7: 4
Week 8: 2

Weeks 1-4: 33 (8.25)
Weeks 6-8: 11 (3.67)

The Eagles are 3-0 in their last three games and the defense has really come alive. Fangio’s unit didn’t give up a touchdown against the Browns or Giants and then held Joe Burrow and the Browns to 17 points, even after giving up a 10-minute touchdown drive to start the game.

The only major personnel switch coming back from the bye week was inserting Cooper DeJean into the lineup as the nickel cornerback for Avonte Maddox. That switch has helped in all facets of the defense and it has really added some physicality.

But that doesn’t seem like the only thing that has changed when it comes to missed tackles. Everyone seems to be doing a better job recently.

Whatever they did during the bye, it’s working.

“For sure,” Dean said. “I wouldn’t even say it’s the drills. I would say it’s how we do the drills. We’re not out there going through the motions. We’re trying to make sure that we’re not out there going through the motions, that we’re actually getting something from that.”

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