The Eagles enter Sunday’s game against the Giants with the 16th-ranked run defense, allowing 123 yards per game on the ground.
That’s a reflection of the entire defense, but it starts up front, as it always does, and for the Eagles that means it begins with the defensive tackles. Jordan Davis was going to be the de facto leader of that group with Fletcher Cox gone, but he hasn’t spoken to reporters much, if at all since the season began.
Then came Friday, when Davis was seen in the locker room after practice.
“You guys caught me,” he said.
Questions followed.
“We’re alright, man,” when asked how he was doing.
Davis didn’t talk about himself as much as he did the unit.
“There’s room to get better, obviously,” he said, “but we’re in a good head space. We know what we gotta do, we know what we have to fix. We’re just excited to get back out there and have another opportunity. It’s a long season … We’re in Game 6. We’re excited to get out there. It’s our first divisional rivalry (game), so we always have a hair up for that. Ready to get out there.”
Later in the 10 minutes or so that he talked, he did talk specifically about himself and how he’s doing. He has played nearly 50 percent of the defensive snaps (48 percent) and has one sack, five solo tackles, and two tackles for loss.
“It’s good,” he said about his play. “It can be better. We all can be better. I don’t really look at it until after the season (as to) how I’ve been. But I know it’s just week to week and we want to focus on improvement.
“…We’re not looking at how I did, or how I feel about it. Yeah, I got room for improvement. But if we keep looking into the past, we’re never going to look ahead. We got the Giants that we’re moving forward towards.”
Like the rest of the defense, the tackle play has been uneven. It is young, but five games into the season, age shouldn’t be an excuse at this point
“We all know we’re young,” he said. “The oldest in the group is Milt (Williams), and he’s 25. So it’s like we all have that chip on our shoulder that we all want to be better than what anybody is anticipating. The only thing we can do is work. We don’t care about our age.”
Davis said the chemistry is coming together, especially with plays such as Thomas Booker, a relative newcomer to the unit and Moro Ojomo, whose role in Year 2 is much more substantial than his rookie season.
“When we can play off our strengths and weaknesses, we feel like there’s no drop-off when the other guys come in,” he said. “It doesn’t matter who’s in the game. We’re all playing at the same high level, and I think that’s really important for us as a D-line. We’re only carrying five, so if one drops down, there’s a world of problems that we have to fix.
“I think where we’re at now, it’s just the chemistry and we’re trying to keep that together. Obviously, our effort is always going to be there. We’re always here to play.”
