Eagles Film Review: Jaelen Phillips Is A Classic “want To Keep, But May Be Hard To Keep” Free Agent

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

Jaelan Phillips enters free agency as one of the most important defensive decisions facing the Philadelphia Eagles this offseason. He played all 17 games (for the Dolphins and Eagles) and fit cleanly into Vic Fangio’s edge structure as a genuine three-down defender. The difficulty is that players with this combination of age, pressure rate, and scheme versatility rarely become come cheap.

Positives

Complete Edge Play

The most important thing Phillips brings to this defense is not a specific pass-rush move or a highlight sack total. He’s just very good at everything. He’s a complete player. Over 17 games, he played 819 (!) snaps, had 73 total pressures, 5 sacks, 57 hurries, 34 solo tackles, and 19 assists. Nearly every number is top 10, except sacks. Coaches don’t put an edge defender on the field in all three phases unless they trust his ability to handle all three phases. Especially Vic Fangio! He beat some good players last year, not just backups!

Sacks involve a degree of variance, such as the coverage holding up long enough, the quarterback holding too long, or an offensive line’s missed assignment. Pressure is what an edge rusher actually controls, and 73 pressures across 391 pass-rush snaps represent consistent disruption. He’s a very good athlete and won in different ways last year, usually by jumping inside guards and winning with explosiveness.

His pass-rush win rate and productivity both ranked very high, which reinforces that his impact goes a lot further than his sack numbers. I was very impressed with his overall play this year.

Scheme Fit and Defensive Discipline

Fangio’s fronts make specific demands of edge defenders that not every rusher can meet. He asks them to play with a lot of discipline, and it’s not just about getting up the field quickly and pressurising the quarterback. They have to set the edge correctly, rush with lane integrity, and stay sound against the run as part of a light box. One-dimensional speed rushers tend to struggle in this system because you need to be stout enough against the run, due to the light box. Just look at what happened to Bryce Huff here…

Phillips fits those requirements. His run defense was really good this past season, and it improved the floor of the position group in a real way. He understands spacing, squeezes gaps correctly, and keeps plays from breaking contain.

The Eagles struggled at times with outside runs this year, but I rarely saw Phillips himself at fault. He plays with the kind of detail that doesn’t show up in a stat line but matters. In a defense built around forcing offenses into long, sustained drives rather than surrendering explosive plays, that discipline is important.

Durability

Given his injury history entering the year, playing all 17 games while maintaining effectiveness throughout was not a given, and it matters enormously in how teams will project him going forward. Edge rushers with red flags in their medical history face a significant market discount until they prove they can handle a full workload. Phillips has now done that. Teams evaluating him this offseason will be paying for a player who demonstrated he can absorb volume snaps across a full season without breaking down, which changes the risk profile of his contract considerably.

Negatives

Very Good, Not Elite

The hesitation with Phillips isn’t about whether he is good. He clearly is. It is about whether he is good enough to command the contract that the market may hand him. He is a very good edge defender, but he is not consistently dominant in the way the true top-of-market rushers are, and that distinction matters when you’re deciding how much of your cap to allocate to one player. He’s a tier below the top.

His sack total is solid, though not exceptional. There are stretches on film where his presence is steady and sound rather than game-altering. The moments where he takes over a game and makes an offense’s entire plan collapse around him are not as frequent as you’d want to see before signing a premium deal. As a comparison, Phillips was significantly better than Jalen Carter last year (who was clearly hurt). But when Jalen Carter was at his best, he would take over a game. You could feel his presence every snap. Phillips doesn’t have that. The best edge rushers in the league can alter a game by themselves.

I think the biggest criticism I have about his overall play is that he doesn’t bend the edge like the truly elite rushers. He doesn’t have the hip or ankle flexibility after his injuries to beat tackles around the edge. He wins in other ways, but I wish we saw this more. That’s not a criticism of his value to this defense. There’s a meaningful difference between a player worth a strong starter contract and a player worth premium edge money, and where Phillips lands in that spectrum is genuinely debatable.

Market Uncertainty

Contract projections from evaluation circles show a wide valuation band on Phillips. Some models place him firmly in the high-end starter range; others push him toward near-elite money. It only takes one team to bet on upside and traits, pushing the price beyond what more measured teams are willing to match. For the Eagles, he is absolutely worth retaining at strong starter money, but it gets a little uncomfortable at premium edge money.

Roster and Cap Context

The Eagles have multiple young defensive linemen and edge players who need snaps and are heading toward their own contract conversations. Players that we have drafted, such as Nolan Smith and Jalyx Hunt. Resource allocation across the defensive front is becoming crowded. Even if the coaching staff ranks Phillips at the top of their defensive retention list, the financial structure of the roster may not cooperate at the number the market produces.

The Verdict

Phillips is a classic “want to keep, but may be hard to keep” free agent, and those are often the most frustrating ones because the outcome feels determined by external factors rather than internal evaluation. From a pure football standpoint, the case for retaining him is straightforward. He is very good, and he will absolutely be missed. He defends the run, generates consistent pressure, wins as a rusher with enough frequency to command respect, and plays with the discipline Fangio’s system demands. The defensive staff would push for a reunion without hesitation. I bet they wanted to keep Milton Williams and Josh Sweat, too. They were also excellent players that the Eagles had to let go.

The challenge is that very good edge rushers are expensive on the open market, and the market doesn’t always differentiate cleanly between very good and elite. Someone may pay Phillips at or near the top of his projection band, and the Eagles will face a tough decision.

I really hope, from a scheme and continuity standpoint, that the market proves softer than expected and a deal gets done. I think it’s absolutely possible, and I think the Eagles will certainly want to keep him. I imagine he will want to stay here, too. If he stays, it’s a significant win for defensive continuity heading into a season where the offense may go through a season of transition, so the defense may need to carry the team once again. If he goes, it won’t be because the Eagles didn’t value him; it will be because the economics of edge rushing in the modern NFL are brutal, and sometimes the price of keeping a good player is simply too high.

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