Eagles Film Review: Losing Nakobe Dean is sad but understandable

This series breaks down the Eagles’ key free agents through the lens of the 2025 season. I will get into what the film showed, how each player fits the scheme, and whether I want them to return. If I include cap numbers in the summary, they are from Spotrac, and all data is via SumerSports. As always, I’ll use film clips to support my work. I’ll be releasing a video breakdown on Patreon, too.

Previously in this series: Reed Blankenship | Jaelen Phillips | Dallas Goedert

Nakobe Dean’s free agency case is one of the most difficult to write, yet probably the easiest to predict. The film shows a high-impact, tone-setting linebacker who brings leadership, urgency, and elite pass-rush juice to the middle of the defense. I love this player. Dean returned from a serious injury concern to produce an impressive stretch of football. He ended up with 55 tackles, 4 sacks, 7 tackles for loss, and 2 forced fumbles across just ten games, with meaningful pressure production layered on top of that. He is widely respected inside the building, plays with a disruptive edge that is rare at the position, and walks into free agency having proven that the injury fears were overblown.

Positives

Pass-Rush Efficiency

The most electric thing Dean does is blitz, and it is not particularly close. On just 35 pass-rush snaps across the season, he generated double-digit pressures, which is a disruption rate that places him among the most efficient blitzing linebackers in the league on a per-snap basis. He earns it through timing, acceleration, and a unique ability to blow up running backs in pass protection. He finishes plays and forces hurried throws in a way that very few off-ball linebackers can replicate. It’s a joke how good he is at times. His closing speed is outstanding.

When he is sent, offenses feel it immediately. His acceleration through interior lanes repeatedly stressed protections, and there were stretches of film where he looked like the most dangerous blitzer on the entire roster. It wasn’t just running backs that he was beating…

Purely as a pressure weapon deployed from the second level, he is exceptional. He’s the kind of player defensive coordinators design entire blitz packages around.

I could watch these clips on repeat…

Production After Injury

What makes his 2025 season particularly excellent is the context surrounding it. There were genuine fears entering the year that his injury history could significantly alter his career trajectory, that he might return as a diminished version of what he was, or that the explosiveness that defines his game might not fully return. It did. He didn’t ease his way into the season. He played fast and aggressively from the start, and the impact plays came immediately rather than trickling in gradually over an extended adjustment period.

Ten games are a small sample, but the quality of play within those ten games was hard to dismiss. I would feel good about his health moving fowrward.

Physical Presence

Dean also carries something that doesn’t show up in any statistical model but shows clearly on film and, by all accounts, inside the building. He plays with visible urgency and a competitive edge. It shows up in pursuit effort on plays that aren’t his assignment, in the energy of his approach to contact, and in the way he finishes. Just look at his lateral speed and finishing ability.

He’s not great in coverage, but his burst and instincts allow him to close throwing windows quickly, and his athleticism doesn’t disappear when he drops into zone.

Negatives

Scheme Mismatch… Sometimes

There are times when I think that he’s a fantastic fit for Vic Fangio’s sim pressures. But, I can’t help but think a more blitz-heavy defensive mind (think Todd Bowles or Brian Flores) would absolutely love having Dean and would send him after the QB more. Vic Fangio’s defensive structure is not designed to be blitz-heavy. It is built around coverage disguise, structural integrity, and forcing offenses into long drives. Dean is an outstanding blitzer, but the scheme doesn’t call his number often enough for that trait to fully drive his value on this roster.

Despite his elite pressure rate, his total pass-rush opportunities remained modest week to week, usually sitting in the low single digits per game. That creates a real mismatch between his most valuable skill and his actual usage.

Consistency

The headline plays were impactful, but down-to-down consistency was more uneven in the back half of the season than when he returned. There were stretches where run fits and control in heavier run-scheme matchups gave him trouble. There were times that offenses ran at him with physicality and found more success than they should have. He is at his best when he is attacking, not when he is stacking and sorting through traffic. The disruptive plays are real, but he’s not perfect. Ben Johnson and the Bears went after him. His head was spinning all game.

The biggest flaw in Dean’s play is his ability in coverage. He is inconsistent and can get caught out in a complicated system like Fangio’s.

He’s not a disaster, but he isn’t asked to do a lot in coverage, and he does struggle to sink at times, especially when the offense uses play-action.

The Jihaad Campbell Problem

The biggest obstacle to a reunion has nothing to do with Dean’s play. It has to do with the pick the Eagles spent on Jihaad Campbell. First-round linebackers are drafted to play immediately and grow into central roles, not to rotate behind veterans on second contracts. Campbell is expected to start next year, Zack Baun is already paid, and the premium linebacker snaps available on this roster are not plentiful enough to justify a significant Dean contract on top of those existing commitments.

The Eagles also have a documented history of not allocating top-tier cap resources to the off-ball linebacker position, and that organizational philosophy is unlikely to shift enough to pay two linebackers and draft one in the 1st round.

Market projections place Dean in a strong starter pay band, with some models pushing toward upper-tier linebacker money. That is a fair reflection of his talent.

The Verdict

Dean is a very good linebacker and a legitimately exceptional pressure weapon. From a pure football standpoint, keeping him is easy to justify. From a roster construction standpoint, it is very hard to make it work.

With Campbell arriving as a first-round investment and expected to anchor the position going forward, and with the scheme not structured around the linebacker blitz packages that make Dean most dangerous, the path to a second contract in Philadelphia is narrow. Another team will offer a deal that reflects his ability to disrupt and upside. The Eagles will likely not match it. I just don’t see it. I don’t mind if I’m wrong, because he’s an awesome player.

There is one lingering question worth sitting with, though. If the Eagles had known coming into the 2025 draft exactly how Dean would return from injury, how fast he would look, how impactful those ten games would be, would Campbell still have been the pick? It’s impossible to answer with certainty. But it’s a question that gets harder to dismiss the more you watch Dean’s film from this season. Especially when you consider that Jeremiah Trotter would have likely been OK until Dean returned. I expect this to be a sad goodbye, and I hope he excels wherever he ends up.

Thank you for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to comment below and ask any questions. If you enjoyed this piece, you can find more of my work and podcast here. If you would like to support me further, please check out my Patreon here!