Another weird week for the Eagles will give way to perhaps the most anticlimactic game on the schedule.

As we anxiously await the first meeting between last year’s NFC championship contenders, here are my notes from the locker room:

Davis’ breakout season

Even amidst the best season of his career, Jordan Davis calls Brandon Graham’s return from retirement the “highlight” of his year.

The reason why traces back to 2022.

Davis entered the NFL uncertain about how his personality would play in a professional locker room. The former first-round pick out of Georgia earned a leadership role in college while maintaining his lighthearted approach, often signing and dancing in the locker room or on the sideline rather than being a more traditional enforcer.

It’s a side his Eagles teammates are seeing plenty of, especially as Davis has emerged as a young leader this season following a path initially tread by Graham as the “energy-giver” in the team’s leadership nucleus.

“As a rookie, I kind of found myself in BG,” Davis said. “Just the way he led. Not saying any of my vets were bad or anything, but the way that BG led, I think it was a different style of leadership that I’m more accustomed to that I’m more used to doing. I did it in college, I never was a rah-rah assertive dude, I was more just keeping everybody up and keeping everybody locked in. You kind of need that influence in the locker room.” 

Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio added, “”He has [become a leader] in his own way. Jordan is really a fun guy to be around, good personality, likes being here, comes to work, enjoys work. Yeah, he has emerged as somewhat of a leader.”

Davis’ breakout season on and off the field coincides with him coming out of his shell with the Eagles at a pivotal time. The 25-year-old has a career-high 4.5 sacks and seven tackles for losses while playing the highest percentage of defensive snaps of his career. According to Next Gen Stats, Davis ranks fourth among the NFL’s defensive tackles in run “stops” this season, a metric that measures how often a player makes a tackle that results in a positive play for the defense.

And even with Graham coming out of retirement midway through the season and spending his time in the defensive-tackle room after making a position switch, it’s still Davis that has assumed the leadership role within the group and the defense as a whole.

“It’s like passing that torch, like, ‘Here you go man, it’s your room,’” Graham said. “Just like when I came back now. I just sit back and kind of watch, if I feel like I can step in somewhere, I step in. But I try to tell them, ‘This is your team now.’” 

Davis added, “Having him back, it’s been the highlight of my year so far,” Davis said. “Especially now that he’s in the room with me so I see him every day. Just the way that he led, the way that he leads, it’s something I want to emulate.” 

Davis’ emergence has affirmed the Eagles prolonged decision to pick up his fifth-year option last offseason, a move that will keep him under contract through 2026. The team exercised Davis’ option just before the deadline, indicative of the uncertainty about whether the 6-foot-6, 336-pound lineman would reach his potential after spending three seasons struggling with conditioning and having little impact as a pass rusher.

Davis said he entered this season with a goal of never getting fined for being late to meetings or, more pointedly, weighing in above the range the team wanted him at throughout the season. One week during his rookie season, Davis said he got fined more than $8,000 for being 12 pounds overweight.

“Each pound was $700,” Davis said. “You can do the math on that one.”

After adding off-day workouts to his regimen at the end of last season and working out regularly on a Peloton bike during the offseason, Davis said the transformation he’s undergone is no coincidence when acknowledging him taking comfort in picking up where Graham left off as a prominent leader for the defense.

“Once I changed my life for the better in terms of my weight and living right and making the right decisions, everything around kind of just falls into place,” Davis said. “I said, this year, I don’t want to get fined for anything. I don’t want to be late, I don’t want to be overweight, I don’t want anything. My rookie year, I was getting fined for being overweight, and I didn’t want to do that anymore.”

“Changing my life and making those necessary changes, everything fell into place.” 

Coach’s Pet

In the aftermath of the Eagles’ dominant performance against the Las Vegas Raiders, I decided to take an unofficial poll from the defensive players about which one of them is Vic Fangio’s favorite.

The winner? Zack Baun.

“Coach Vic, he’s the type of guy who will criticize anybody, but it’s the type of criticism he’ll give you,” Davis said. “It’ll be like [soft voice] ‘Come on, Zack’ or ‘Come on, JD,’ but if it’s another player, he’ll be like [unintelligible, loud screaming].”

Upon hearing at least three defensive players named him as the favorite, Baun offered a dismissive rebuttal that Cooper DeJean was, in fact, the actual coach’s pet.

“It’s Coop,” Baun said, shaking his head. “It’s Coop. You see him using him in different ways, different positions, different pacakges. Yeah, it’s Coop. I might be on the list, but I’m not his No. 1.”

Third place fell between Quinyon Mitchell and Jordan Davis, but Mitchell said Davis is quietly Fangio’s No. 1.

“Jordan Davis,” Mitchell said. “He’s an outgoing person, great guy, great leader. So I’d say him.”

Prediction

The NFL’s dubious gamble to delay the NFC championship game rematch between the Eagles and Washington Commanders until late December has backfired significantly, but that doesn’t mean this game won’t have the potential for intrigue.

On paper, it should be an opportunity for the Eagles offense to continue on the right track into the postseason against a defense that ranks 30th in EPA/drive, 27th in DVOA and 29th in success rate. How that looks will be instructive; the Eagles found success operating out of under center on early downs against the Las Vegas Raiders and could lean more heavily into that en route to the postseason, but it’s hard to know the direction Nick Sirianni and Co. want to go in based off the way the season has gone.

My guess? The Eagles prioritize the play-action game against Washington and continue utilizing a run-heavy approach on early downs to complement it. Whether that comes from under center of the shotgun is harder to figure.

Defensively, Marcus Mariota’s ability to create with his legs will be an interesting test for the Eagles’ defense. It’s hard to nitpick the way Fangio’s group has played this year, but there have been some examples of scrambling quarterbacks finding open space against the team’s light boxes and match-zone heavy approach.

With that said, this still seems like a game the Eagles’ defensive front should be able to control. It’s tough to predict blowouts between division rivals, but the Eagles should win this one comfortably.

Prediction: Eagles 27, Commanders 12