When Vic Fangio spoke about Jalen Carter before the season opener, he emphasized how important it is for the explosive interior defensive lineman to control his emotions.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has to play with the right mindset to reach his potential, or come close to reaching his potential,\u201d Fangio said. \u201cHe’s just got to be on top of the details, play with great effort and be focused.\u201d<\/p>\n
Three days later, Fangio was forced to coach against the Cowboys in the season opener without Carter after he was ejected before the first snap of the game for spitting on Dak Prescott.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s exactly what Fangio was talking about when he spoke about focus.<\/p>\n
His focus has to be on playing football, not anything else, and Fangio addressed that Tuesday in his first comments on Carter since the win over Dallas.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to be focused at the job at hand and all extracurricular stuff needs to not have any importance to you,\u201d Fangio said.<\/p>\n
We all know how much talent Carter has.<\/p>\n
He had a remarkable 2024 season, earning 2nd-team all-pro and making the Pro Bowl as a 23-year-old in his first season as a starter. He had 4 \u00bd sacks, six pass deflections, two forced fumbles, 16 quarterback hits and 12 tackles for loss during the regular season last year, then added two more sacks, three pass deflections, seven QB hits and two tackles for loss in the postseason.<\/p>\n
He was one of the biggest reasons the Eagles had the NFL\u2019s No. 1 defense and won a Super Bowl.<\/p>\n
But when he\u2019s not on the field, none of that matters.<\/p>\n
The Eagles were waiting Tuesday for word from the NFL whether Carter will be suspended for his actions Thursday night. And Nick Sirianni hasn\u2019t said whether Carter will face any team discipline apart from whatever the NFL decides.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s clear Carter has a lot to work on to make sure this sort of thing doesn\u2019t happen again. He could have cost his team a division win last week, and the possibility of facing the Chiefs without Carter is scary.<\/p>\n
Carter has spoken about being a leader, but leaders don\u2019t do what he did Thursday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, to be considered a leader, actions speak louder than words and he’s got to lead through his actions,\u201d Fangio said.<\/p>\n
It’s a credit to Fangio\u2019s genius that the Eagles were eventually able to figure out how to play without Carter. They allowed touchdowns on the Cowboys\u2019 first two drives, field goals on the next two and then didn\u2019t allow a point on the last four, blanking Dallas in the second half.<\/p>\n
Fangio said the biggest challenge after the ejection was figuring out how to make up the 55 to 60 snaps Carter would have played.<\/p>\n
Jordan Davis played 53 snaps, the most he\u2019s ever played in a non-overtime game (he played 62 in the OT win over the Bills in 2023), Moro Ojomo played a career-high 55, Byron Young played 22, the 2nd-most of his career and Gabe Hall played five in his first NFL game.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first thing that happens is now you’re down to four D linemen and everybody’s rep counts got to go up,\u201d he said. \u201cSo to me, that’s the biggest adjustment. Obviously, you lose the player, which is no good on multiple fronts. But it’s a rep thing, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
As upset as he was, Fangio said he left it up to the head coach to talk about what happened Thursday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cPretty much Nick on that, \u201c he said. \u201cWhen it gets to that extreme.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Vic Fangio spoke about Jalen Carter before the season opener, he emphasized how important it is for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2068],"tags":[25,4904,7,476,6,242,109,2476,7960],"class_list":{"0":"post-354933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-eagles","8":"tag-eagles","9":"tag-eagles-blog","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-jalen-carter","12":"tag-nfl","13":"tag-philadelphia","14":"tag-philadelphia-eagles","15":"tag-philadelphiaeagles","16":"tag-vic-fangio"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115175919844769270","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}