All-time Eagles defense: Best players of the past 25 years

The 2024 Philadelphia Eagles had the best defense in the NFL, and they were the best overall defense that the Eagles have had this millennium. There have been seasons like 2022 when they had disgusting amounts of sacks, 2009 when they had an ungodly amount of interceptions, or the early 2000s teams where they were also just really awesome from top to bottom… 

But what would it look like if we could lump the best players from all of those teams together? Luckily, we’re smack dab in the middle of the offseason after the 25th season of the century, and it’s the perfect time to build the Eagles quarter-century team.

A lot of great cornerbacks. Not a lot of great linebackers. 

Building the Eagles' quarter century offense was tough because there were a bunch of guys right on the bubble of being the best. On defense, it’s a little bit easier because the guys who were best were the best by a whoooooole lot. 

Defensive Tackle:
Fletcher Cox, Javon Hargrave, and Jalen Carter

Fletcher Cox is a no-brainer for this team. He was the best defensive player on the 2017 team, and he was also an Eagle for 12 years. He’s undeniably DT1. After that, it gets a little tricky. I ended up going with Javon Hargrave and Jalen Carter, even though neither of them has had the longest tenure. 

Hargrave was only with the Eagles from 2020 to 2022, but he was a killer in those three seasons. He racked up a total of 23 sacks, but it was capped off with his 2022 season, where he had a pressure rate of 14.3% and 11 of the Eagles' 70 total sacks. 

Jalen Carter has only had two seasons with the Eagles, but he’s a demolition crew in his own right. Typically, it takes defensive linemen a few years to be able to play at a high level because of the size and speed of NFL offensive linemen, but Carter kind of skipped over that loading phase. He was the runner-up for Defensive Rookie of the Year in 2023, and he was an All-Pro in 2024.

On top of that, his two plays at the end of the divisional game against the Rams in the playoffs, where he sacked Matt Stafford on third down and then pressured him into a bad throw on fourth down, were the two most important plays of the entire season. He’s young, but he gets to be on the 25-year team. 

Edge/Defensive End:
Brandon Graham, Trent Cole, and Josh Sweat

Trent Cole and Josh Sweat played both defensive end and outside linebacker (Edge) in their time with The Birds, so we’re just going to lump all the pass rushers together. 

Brandon Graham is obviously the leader here. He played solely with the Eagles for 15 years, and he made the most important play in franchise history when he strip-sacked Tom Brady with 2:14 left in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl LII. Then, last season, he tore his triceps on November 24th and came back to play in the Super Bowl 77 days later. B.G. should be your favorite football player. 

Then there’s Trent Cole, who was an Eagle from 2005 to 2014, and in that time, he had 88.5 sacks. That’s second in franchise history behind Reggie White's unbreakable record of 124. When you think of the Eagles' mid-2000s defense, you think Brian Dawkins, Jeremiah Trotter, and Trent Cole. 

I put Josh Sweat on this team over Haason Reddick, and it mostly has to do with how long he was with the team. Sure, Reddick was awesome in 2022 and 2023, racking up 27 sacks, and it felt like just about every single one of them came at the clutchest moments ever, but he was only with the team for two years. 

Josh Sweat, on the other hand, might not have been so consistently clutch, but he was still really good and he was really good for a long time. He was drafted in 2018 and was unbelievably solid for almost all of his seven years with the team. Then, he capped off his career with the franchise by getting 2.5 sacks on Patrick Mahomes in Super Bowl LIX, where the Eagles won 40-6 (don’t let anyone ever tell you that’s not the actual score).

Sweat also deserves to make this team because he has the coldest sack celebration in the league:

Cornerbacks:
Darius Slay and Asante Samuel

The Eagles' cornerbacks over the last 25 years and the linebackers over the last 25 years couldn’t be more different. When I picked Darius Slay and Asante Samuel, that meant I had to pass over Lito Shepherd and Troy Vincent. That’s a tough decision. 

I picked Big Play Slay because he was the big dawg on the best defense in the NFL and a leader on a Super Bowl-winning team. He might not have had as much production as other cornerbacks over the past 25 years, but intangibles mean something.

I also picked Asante Samuel because in his four seasons with the Eagles (2008 to 2011), he was a pro-bowler three times and an All-Pro once, in 2008 he led the NFL in passes defended (25), and in 2009 he led the NFL in interceptions (9). Asante Samuel was awesome, and he ended his career in Philadelphia with a whopping 23 interceptions. 

For the record, in Eric Allen’s best four-year stretch with the Eagles (1991 to 1994), he had 18 interceptions. Samuel was no Allen, but being up there production-wise is pretty incredible.

Safeties:
Brian Dawkins and Malcolm Jenkins

Safety was another easy position to pick as well. Brian Dawkins was the best and most fun defensive back to ever wear midnight green, and we’ll all be dead before that changes. 

Malcolm Jenkins was the captain of the Eagles' 2017 team. He never missed a game in all six of the seasons that he was with the team, and he was a pro-bowler for three of them. On top of that, in Super Bowl LII, he made the most violent play of the game when he took the soul out of Brandin Cooks.  

Linebackers:
Zack Baun and Jeremiah Trotter

The Eagles have had a lot of bad linebackers, some good linebackers, a few great linebackers, and only a couple of awesome linebackers, so it was pretty easy to narrow it down to Zack Baun and Jeremiah Trotter.

Trot was the best linebacker in Eagles history, and Baun just had the best single-season for a linebacker in Eagles history. You could make an argument for Jordan Hicks to be on this list since he essentially ended Tony Romo’s career, but that means Baun wouldn’t be on there and I simply won’t stand for that.