Emotional And 'Fanatical' Eagles Debut For Jaelan Phillips

At the end, with the scoreboard still showing the 10-7 win, Phillips felt another emotion when he looked into the stands and saw two fans wearing his new jersey number, 50. He was 15 with the Dolphins, but two fans were already sporting his new look. Turned out, those two fans were his dad and uncle, who drove up from snowy Chicago for the game.

“Seeing them on the front row in the stands after the game, that’s priceless,” he said. “You can’t replicate that. I was doing a live interview (on the field), and I saw people wearing No. 50 waving at me. At first, I didn’t recognize him - it was my dad’s best friend, my uncle. I was like, ‘Oh, someone is wearing my jersey, then I was like, ‘Oh, it’s my dad, it’s my uncle.’ It was unbelievable.”

In between the beginning and the end of the game, Phillips made six tackles, all against the run, including one for loss, and recovered a fumble.

(Stopping the run) is equally as important if not more important, and obviously the sacks are flashier, everybody talks about pass rush, but truly you can’t rush the passer unless you stop the run.,” he said. “I think it’s a bit of a pride thing. Really you can see pass rush as more finesse, more sexy, but stopping the run is gritty. It’s hard and it takes toughness, and I think that’s what we showed.”

He was in the backfield on a fourth-and-one stop inside two minutes to go in the game and could have been credited with a forced fumble when Josh Jacobs couldn’t hold the ball and Reed Blankenship recovered it.

“That fourth-down play I think signifies the kind of physicality that the man has,” said head coach Nick Sirianni. “I just think about his week of practice and how he goes about his business. He runs full volume. He loves working. You can just see it, the way he was running around at practice. His motor is constantly running, just pushing to get better. So obviously it was a really big impact that he made tonight for his first game as an Eagle.”

Phillips played 53 defensive snaps, 78 percent. And think about that. The outside linebacker/edge rusher just got here one week ago, and he played 78 percent of snaps.

That was 52 more than the other two players acquired at the trade deadline – Michael Carter and Jaire Alexander – played. Carter got one. Alexander didn’t get any because he stayed behind in Philadelphia.

“I’m just glad I can come in and help the team,” said Phillips. “My biggest thing coming in was, like, no ego and just wanted to earn the respect of my teammates, the coaches, and the fans, and everybody. All I can really do on my end is obviously do my job and do my plays, but just play with fanatical effort, and that’s what I do play in and play out. Obviously, it’s great to get some production and make big plays for the team. Like, what better stage to do it on?”