Zack Baun hates talking about himself. The Eagles’ linebacker doesn’t quite blush when a dizzying list of achievements, including his NFC Defensive Player of the Week award for Week 10, get rattled off to him in the post-game locker room on Thursday night but his face reddens a bit.
Baun senses the swing of the conversation and flexes an audible. “I’m glad it was on a short week because, as you guys know, I don’t like a lot of attention. So, it just kind of slid under the radar and I’m okay with that.”
Baun is speaking mere minutes after hurling his body at Jayden Daniels, stopping the Commanders quarterback dead in his tracks on a crucial 4th-and-2 play. Five plays later, NFL MVP candidate Saquon Barkley turned on the afterburners on two electrifying touchdown runs to salt the game away for the Eagles. Baun’s metamorphosis into a human missile late in the fourth quarter was the “put out the damn fire” moment to quote C.J. Gardner-Johnson.
“I call Zack Baun the tone setter in that group, that linebacker group, in general,” Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts said. “But Zack Baun, how he’s been able to come here, be a part of this team, take leadership in his role, and his actions do a lot of talking for him.”
Barkley added his two cents, saying the Eagles’ defense was “balling” and specifically called out Baun for stepping up. “Zack is playing at a Pro Bowl level,” Barkley said. “All the names you guys hear, the jerseys you probably see, are mostly offense but those guys [on defense] are coming alive.“
Baun finished with a game-high 15 combined tackles against Washington, upping his season total to 102 which is a new career high for the Eagles’ linebacker. Pro Football Focus has him ranked as the third-best off-the-ball linebacker in the entire league. It’s been a startling storm of sentiment for a player who came into training camp on a cheap one-year contract without a defined role. Then, Eagles’ defensive coordinator Vic Fangio put him at inside linebacker in a semi-controversial move.
“I remember my first press conference I didn’t really know where I was playing,” Baun said. “He just put me there and told me that’s where I was going to play.”
Luckily it hit. Baun has been indispensable to Fangio’s two-high shell scheme, thanks to his ability to read and react on the fly. His stellar play has ignited an impromptu publicity campaign in the City of Brotherly Love as fans continue to flood social media with one snappy demand: Howie, give this man a contract extension.
When asked by this reporter if he was following the recruiting frenzy, Baun let loose a nervous chuckle: “Am I aware of it? I see it on my Instagram comments. I don’t have Twitter or anything else. I love the love. It’s awesome.“
Communication is Key: Building Chemistry with Nakobe Dean
Zack Baun isn’t the only one turning heads on a super-charged Eagles’ defense. He and Nakobe Dean have transformed the linebackers group into a position of strength, an annoying rarity for a franchise that has largely ignored the position in recent years. The whole unit has bought into Eagles’ head coach Nick Sirianni’s message of connecting — one of his five core principles — and that motto has wandered the halls of the NovaCare Complex like a fact-checked version of whisper down the lane.
“There’s a lot of communication that goes on,” Dean said. “Zack and I, as the linebackers, we are the glue … because we got to talk to everybody.”
Their AP chemistry lesson ballooned during the bye week, after the Buccaneers walloped the Eagles 33-16.
“We did a lot of self-scout and self-evaluation of ourselves,” Dean said. “We got real about it, and we had real conversations as a linebackers room — and, as individuals, to each other about what we wanted to do and what we needed to do.”
“Coach Nick talks a lot about connecting in the locker room, and we really took that to heart,” Baun said. “Guys were playing ping pong in the locker room, listening to music … Jordan Mailata’s playing his guitar and we’re hanging out on the couch, so just connecting all around is crucial for a team.“
Taking it to heart is one thing, but the linebackers decided to have double bypass surgery.
“When we’re not on the same page, we let each other know,” Dean said of his communication with Baun. “I feel that speaks more to the relationship that we’ve always been on the same page, about holding each other accountable to be on the same page.”
Baun and Dean appear to be forming the foundation for a long-term duo in Philadelphia. Both men have birthdays in December — Baun will turn 28, Dean will turn 24 — and, assuming Howie Roseman files those contract extensions, the decades-long problem at linebacker might finally be fixed.
“It’s the linebackers. It’s the line. It’s the backend,” Baun said. “The communication is really clicking right now, and it starts up front with the D-line getting pushback and knockback, and then the communication in the backend, and trusting that we’re going to pack the zones in the linebackers spot.”
Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-Imagn Images
