Nakobe Dean spent four years in Philadelphia, won a Super Bowl with the Eagles and left this offseason as a fan favorite.<\/p>\n
Dean, 25, signed a three-year deal in free agency to join the Raiders. It was a departure that didn\u2019t come as much of a surprise to Dean, his teammates or Eagles fans.<\/p>\n
But it can still be difficult to say goodbye. Dean got a chance to be a little reflective last week in an exclusive interview with NBC 10.<\/p>\n
\u201cI appreciate all the ups, all the downs, the cheers, the boos,\u201d Dean said about Eagles fans. \u201cI appreciate every single thing. Me coming in and instilling myself into the community, how I was accepted with open arms. Philly is forever a home for me, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Raiders signed Dean to a three-year, $36 million deal earlier this month. The reason Dean\u2019s departure wasn\u2019t a surprise was because of Jihaad Campbell.<\/p>\n
The Eagles last April drafted Campbell with the 31st overall pick out of Alabama and Campbell held down a starting job in his rookie season until Dean returned from his torn patellar tendon. While Dean provided a boost to the Eagles\u2019 defense back next to Zack Baun in 2025, Campbell still has a bright future ahead of him.<\/p>\n
Just ask the guy he\u2019s replacing.<\/p>\n
\u201cJihaad can be great,\u201d Dean said. \u201cYou\u2019re talking about somebody who was probably on track to win Defensive Rookie of the Year. But that\u2019s what you expected. And he\u2019s close to home, so it\u2019s his team too. He had a lot of expectations definitely being a first round pick and everything. And I feel like now that he\u2019ll have that role to be hisself and to play the ball that he needs to play, the sky is the limit for him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re talking about a guy who\u2019s got the size, the ability to do everything on the field from the linebacker position, from covering, to blitzing, to stopping the run. He\u2019s a three-down linebacker. He can do it all. He\u2019s going to be great for sure, and he\u2019s got a crazy work ethic.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Eagles drafted Dean in the third round of the 2022 draft. It took until his third NFL season to break out but Dean had a fantastic 2024 season, starting 15 games with 128 tackles, 3 sacks, 4 pass breakups, 2 fumble recoveries, a forced fumble and an interception. Dean was a Pro Bowl caliber starting middle linebacker.<\/p>\n
His season in 2024 unfortunately ended in the wild-card round when he tore his patellar tendon but he was still a huge part of the Eagles\u2019 Super Bowl season. And then when he returned last year, he was perhaps even better.<\/p>\n
The problem is that the Eagles last offseason signed Baun to a three-year, $51 million deal and then drafted Campbell. They just couldn\u2019t allocate more resources to Dean, so pretty much everyone expected him to depart this offseason.<\/p>\n
That included his fellow Georgia Bulldogs on the roster. Dean was actually at Nolan Smith\u2019s golf tournament in Savannah, Georgia, when his deal with the Raiders was finalized.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey kind of expected it, to be honest,\u201d Dean said. \u201cA lot of people did. They happy. Not so much of me not being an Eagle anymore and not playing with them, but they happy that I was able to get a contract and I was able to get paid. There\u2019s things that we always talk about.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cJust like I\u2019m happy for [Jordan Davis]. Soon as I see [Davis\u2019s extension], I texted him, I know his phone was blowing up. I\u2019m pretty sure they happy. I was actually with Nolan the day I was able to get the deal done. Those are forever brothers of mine. [Jalen Carter\u2019s] birthday coming up the first week in April. It\u2019s things like that. It\u2019s forever.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nakobe Dean spent four years in Philadelphia, won a Super Bowl with the Eagles and left this offseason…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":828470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2068],"tags":[25,4904,7,6,242,109,2476],"class_list":{"0":"post-828469","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-nfl","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-philadelphia-eagles","14":"tag-philadelphiaeagles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116276579144483626","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828469","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=828469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/828470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=828469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=828469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=828469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}