New Eagles DC Vic Fangio has had Cowboys’ number during McCarthy era

The Cowboys’ annual rivalry series versus the Eagles looks like it may be a little bit tougher moving forward, as Philadelphia is adding to their staff a key assistant, one who seems to have a recent knack for giving Dallas fits.

The Eagles are expected to make Vic Fangio their new defensive coordinator, according to multiple reports from various league insiders Wednesday evening. The 65-year-old Fangio, a veteran coach who has roamed the sidelines for ten clubs over an NFL career spanning nearly four decades, spent the 2023 season as Miami’s defensive coordinator.

That’s where the Cowboys ran into him last, in a Week 16 loss that saw Fangio’s unit hold Dallas to under 100 team rushing yards, sack Dak Prescott four times, allow just four third-down conversions, and create a touchdown-saving turnover at the goal line en route to a two-point Dolphins win.

But Fangio’s defenses have actually made a habit of those kind of performances against the Cowboys’ offenses of the Mike McCarthy era.

As Denver’s head coach in 2021, Fangio’s Broncos shocked the 6-1 Cowboys in an early-November blowout loss that was nowhere near as close as the 30-16 final might indicate.

Fangio shut out Dallas’s top-ranked offense until the final five minutes, when Denver was already up by an overwhelming 30-0 score. Holding the Cowboys rushing attack to just 78 yards and limiting their offense to under 19 minutes of possession, the Broncos defense also managed to contain Prescott to the tune of barely five yards per pass and stop Dallas on four fourth-down conversion attempts.

“They bought into what we had to do to have a chance to slow them down,” Fangio said of his team that day. “We did more than slow them down.”

Afterward, the popular narrative in Dallas was that Fangio had just shown the rest of the league the “blueprint” on how to stymie the Cowboys’ high-powered offense.

McCarthy downplayed that characterization at the time, but did admit to reporters, “Frankly, we were outcoached.”

It was a rare bright spot for Fangio in the Mile High City. The Pennsylvania native departed Denver after that season and was seen frequently at Eagles training camp over the summer of 2022.

“You pick their brain,” Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni said at the time. “He’s here because he’s got relationships with guys. Of course we’d be foolish not to use him.”

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Five weeks into the regular season, it was reported that Fangio had been helping out the Eagles in some type of remote consultancy role; Philadelphia beat Dallas by a 26-17 score just a few days later.

The Eagles defense, under coordinator Jonathan Gannon and armed with a game plan that may- or may not- have also had Fangio’s fingerprints on it, intercepted three passes by Cowboys backup Cooper Rush, who was playing in place of an injured Prescott. Two of those interceptions led to 10 of the Eagles’ 20 second-quarter points. Rush went into that halftime with a passer rating of just 1.0 and struggled playing catch-up the rest of the night.

In the Christmas Eve rematch, the Philadelphia defense was again a force, snagging a pick-six that put the Birds ahead 10-0 very early and ultimately sacking Prescott half a dozen times. The game went Dallas’s way, though, with the Cowboys mounting a come-from-behind effort to beat Philly by a 40-34 final.

Fangio signed an official two-week contract with the Eagles prior to Super Bowl LVII and was said to have assisted with self-scouting the Philadelphia offense. (Ian Rapoport reported that Fangio had not consulted during the regular season after all.)

The Eagles had wanted Fangio to step in as their DC after the Super Bowl loss, but only if Gannon were to become head coach of another club. Gannon caught the team off-guard when he bolted for Arizona… and by then, Fangio had already agreed to take the Miami job under Mike McDaniel.

Fangio’s Dolphins unit improved under his 2023 leadership, finishing 10th in yards allowed, third in sacks, and tied for eighth in takeaways.

With that Dolphins’ victory over Dallas one month ago, Fangio can be credited with a 3-1 record over the four times he’s faced McCarthy’s Cowboys: as a head coach, (maybe) an unofficial consultant, and a defensive coordinator.

And now he looks to be leading the Philly D for real for the 2024 season.

Story originally appeared on Cowboys Wire