Eagles

Thought This Was a Good Swipe at Pro Football Focus from Vic Fangio, RE: Jayden Daniels

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Sep 11th, 2026 · 9:43 AM EDT

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You know the rules –

If Pro Football Focus publishes a statistic that makes the Eagles look good, it is totally legitimate and worth sharing. But if PFF publishes a statistic that makes the Eagles look bad, they are illegitimate and just throwing shit against the wall.

Cue this Thursday quote from Vic Fangio:

Q. As you self-scouted, how do you think you guys handled mobile quarterbacks last year? (Zach Berman)

Vic Fangio: I don’t know. You might overall do a good job, but it’s those ones where you don’t and they make a big play out of it, stand out. I don’t know how we would rate on that. Maybe PFF has some phony stat you can look up. It’s a problem when you play scrambling quarterback and [Washington Commanders QB Jayden] Daniels obviously is excellent at that.

The Eagles didn’t see Daniels in 2026 because of injury. He only played in seven games.

But his rookie year, 2024, the Birds and Commies played three times, and Daniels went:

• 22-32 for 191 yards, 1 touchdown, 1 interception, 7 rushes for 18 yards (loss at the Linc)
• 24-39 for 258 yards, 5 touchdowns, 2 interceptions, 9 rushes for 81 yards (win in Washington, Kenny Pickett backup game)
• 29-48 for 255 yards, 1 touchdown, 1 interception, 6 rushes for 48 yards and a touchdown (big loss in the NFC Championship Game)

A mixed bag for Daniels against the Eagles during his rookie season.

We don’t have a PFF subscription these days, but I asked the A.I. connected to our in-house database the following question:

“Do you have any statistics showing how the Eagles handled mobile quarterbacks in 2025? I’m thinking scramble yardage allowed, off-schedule plays, things of that nature. The Birds open with Jayden Daniels on Sunday.“

This is what it spit out:

“During the 2025 regular season, the Philadelphia Eagles defense struggled significantly containing mobile quarterbacks and off-schedule scrambles, allowing the most scramble attempts (45), most scramble first downs (23), and most scramble touchdowns (4) in the NFL, while surrendering 328 scramble rushing yards (tied for 2nd-most) and 400 total QB rushing yards (2nd-most).”

Then I asked a follow-up question – how many rushing yards allowed to quarterbacks last year?

The Eagles allowed 400 rushing yards (and 7 touchdowns) on 82 attempts to opposing quarterbacks during the 2025 regular season (424 rushing yards on 91 attempts including the playoffs).

That was the second most rushing yards allowed to quarterbacks last season, behind the Giants, and you could probably put an asterisk on that stat since the Birds’ pass coverage was very good. A number of those scrambles likely don’t happen if the QB decides to actually throw at Quinyon Mitchell or Cooper DeJean. Everything must be taken with a grain of salt, or several grains of salt.

The opposing QBs who did damage on the ground last year were Patrick Mahomes, Jaxson Dart, and Justin Herbert, who all ran for 50+ yards on the Birds. Josh Allen had two touchdowns, but just 27 yards on 7 runs. Josh Johnson put up 45 yards in the Week 18 trash game. Caleb Williams and Bo Nix didn’t do much.

Preseason reports suggest the Commies’ offensive line wasn’t great this summer. Hopefully that turns out to be true on Sunday and the Birds get off to a good start.