Jaelan Phillips’ injuries would have halted many careers. Here’s why the new Eagle kept going.
In a sea of Dolphins in Miami, Jaelan Phillips stood out to Eagles left tackle Jordan Mailata. Phillips’ separation from the swarm of aqua jerseys in the teams’ 2022 joint training-camp practices had nothing to do with his level of play — at first.
Phillips, then 23 years old and fresh off his rookie season, wasn’t dressed like his teammates. He donned an orange jersey, a distinction Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel bestowed upon the player who had the best performance in the previous day’s practice.
Mailata thought the orange jersey indicated that the young edge rusher was injured, just one shade off from the quarterbacks’ no-contact red jerseys. When he found out what it actually meant, he was equal parts amused and skeptical.
“I was like, ‘Ohhhh-kay, buddy,’” Mailata said Thursday.
He changed his tune on the orange jersey when the 6-foot-5, 263-pound Phillips lined up for offensive line-defensive line one-on-ones.
“I was like, ‘OK, yeah, I can see why,’” Mailata said. “‘This guy’s legit.’”
The player with a “nasty get-off” whom Mailata saw in joint practice that day is the same player who stood out in his Eagles debut on Monday night against the Green Bay Packers. The Eagles acquired Phillips in exchange for a 2026 third-round pick just six days earlier in an effort to bolster an edge rusher corps that had been mostly quiet this season.
» READ MORE: Eagles vs. Lions predictions: Our writers pick a winner for Week 11
Phillips made noise immediately. He posted two quarterback hits, a fumble recovery, and a tackle for loss in the Eagles’ dominant defensive showing that sealed the team’s 10-7 win.
Sunday night’s prime time game against the Detroit Lions will mark Phillips’ first home game as an Eagle. It’s also his first game at the Linc since 2023, which was a roller coaster of a year in Phillips’ career. He was having a breakout season under then-Dolphins defensive coordinator Vic Fangio before it was halted by an Achilles injury just four games after his visit to Philadelphia.
“What an opportunity,” Phillips said of Sunday night’s game. “You pray for times like this. Being able to play big games in big environments is a blessing.”
After all, opportunities like those haven’t always been guaranteed for Phillips.
‘He’s a tough kid’
Todd Stroud, the University of Miami’s former defensive line coach, has been coaching in the college ranks for almost 40 years. He’s helped produce 10 first-round draft picks, from Buffalo All-Pro Mario Williams (the No. 1 overall pick in the 2006 draft out of North Carolina State) to Bills standout Gregory Rousseau (a 2021 first-rounder out of Miami).
Then, of course, there’s Phillips, who transferred to Miami from UCLA in 2019 and joined the Dolphins as the No. 18 overall selection two years later. Phillips will always stand out in Stroud’s memory. Of all the players he coached who went on to have NFL careers, none could match the effort that Phillips put into football, Stroud said.
“He’s a tough kid, man, and he doesn’t know the word ‘quit,’” Stroud said.
Phillips had to come close to learning it. He retired from football in 2018 after sustaining a litany of injuries during his freshman and sophomore years at UCLA. The five-star recruit from Redlands, Calif., was hit by a car while riding his moped in January 2018, and three bones had to be surgically removed from his broken wrist. He also suffered two ankle injuries and a pair of concussions while playing.
Phillips gave up football and decided to follow in his parents’ footsteps as musicians by enrolling at Los Angeles City College in pursuit of an education in music production. He says he dropped down to 205 pounds, no longer needing the muscle that powered his on-field pursuits. But the injuries were only one factor in his decision to pause his football career, according to Stroud.
» READ MORE: Eagles midseason awards and second-half X Factors
“I think he got his stinger taken away and his love from football taken away from him, to some degree,” Stroud said.
In hindsight, Phillips doesn’t point the finger at anyone but himself for his desire to step away from the game.
“It was my 18-year-old headspace,“ Phillips said. ”It was my decision-making. It was a lot that was going on. So once I had some time to get away from it, I think I kind of realized that it wasn’t football that was a problem.”
Phillips credits his father, Jonathan, for persuading him to give football another chance. He recounted the many instances where he would fight with his father, adamant that he was done for good. Eventually, he heard him out and decided to transfer to Miami, where he arrived to the football program “wounded,” Stroud said, but willing to give his playing career another chance.
That chance wouldn’t come immediately. Per NCAA transfer rules at the time, Phillips had to sit out for a season. Miami took it a step further, and kept him sidelined during fall and spring practices and limited his participation to meetings and the weight room.
Stroud called it the “perfect storm” that helped him regain his love for the game. Phillips concurred.
“Getting [to Miami], finding another environment of just being around guys who are passionate,” Phillips said was the reason his fire returned. “Finding that youthful joy of the game. Not taking it so seriously and just going out there and having fun again and getting my body back, getting my confidence back, being healthy played a big part in that, too.”
Phillips said he thought his career would be “smooth sailing” from there. But the adversity didn’t end with his Hurricanes renaissance. Phillips’ 2023 and 2024 seasons with the Dolphins were curtailed by long-term injuries. First, there was the noncontact Achilles injury sustained on Black Friday in 2023. Then, there was the partial ACL tear just four games into the following season.
Former Dolphins edge rusher Emmanuel Ogbah was devastated for his then-teammate, especially given the timing of the injuries. Ogbah, who’s now with the Jacksonville Jaguars, said Phillips was off to a “phenomenal” year under Fangio in 2023. Three years into his NFL career, Phillips finally “stopped thinking too much and just went out there and just played ball,” said the veteran pass rusher.
“I would say in the beginning, you could tell it was kind of tough on him,” Ogbah said of Phillips’ injuries. “Just down about it. You could tell his attitude, and then all of a sudden, there was kind of a switch, and then he said, ‘Oh, I’ve got to come back. I’ve got to come back better, stronger, and faster than ever.’”
Phillips’ switch was rooted in the realization that he could do everything within his control right and bad things could still transpire.
“Life happens, and things are going to happen,” Phillips said. “But at the end of the day, it’s all about your perspective on it. How you deal with the adversity is really what separates the average from the great and how you respond to that stuff.
“I think the biggest thing is being able to flip the perspective from feeling sorry for yourself or just fall into your adversity, or you could have the perspective of, ‘This is going to make me stronger.’ Really, anything in life that happens, good or bad, indifferent, you can take positives from it.”
Phillips can ‘wreak havoc’
Zack Baun arrived in Philadelphia in 2024 as Fangio was departing the Dolphins to become the Eagles’ defensive coordinator. In those early days in Philly, the veteran coach would show Dolphins film as his new players learned his defense.
The group he watched on film in Miami featured some familiar faces to Baun, including his former college teammate at Wisconsin, Andrew Van Ginkel. With each successive clip, though, a different defender caught Baun’s eye.
“I kept seeing Jaelan,” Baun said. “I’m like, ‘Who is this guy?’”
That guy, Baun said, reminded him of the Washington Commanders’ 2020 No. 2 overall pick, Chase Young, when he was coming out of Ohio State. Like Young, Phillips was also a big, athletic, do-it-all outside linebacker, capable of rushing the passer and playing the run.
So Baun and the team weren’t shocked to see Phillips make a quick impact for the Eagles defense, given his talent and his history with Fangio. Of course, the Eagles defensive coordinator wasn’t surprised either — “When you shop at Nordstrom, you get good stuff,” Fangio said on Thursday.
Some were taken, however, by Phillips’ physical presence in person vs. on film.
“Big, huge dude, just enormous,” Nick Sirianni said two days after the trade. “Sometimes when I meet somebody in person for the first time, they’re like, ‘Oh, you’re a lot taller than I thought,’ and I’m like, ‘Well, I’m 6-3, but I do stand next to Lane Johnson and Jordan Mailata.’ Well, he does the same thing. He towers over me just the same way those guys do.”
Matt Pryor quickly experienced Phillips’ physicality during the first practice after the trade deadline. The Eagles were in pads for that session, so the offensive and defensive lines ran through a two-on-two drill.
The depth tackle took two reps against Phillips. Within seconds, Pryor became acquainted with the “twitchy” outside linebacker, who excels at getting vertical off the pass rush.
“He uses his arms well,” Pryor said. “So once he starts pressing vertical, unless you can get back underneath and get your hands back inside, it’s going to be hard to stop somebody who’s strong and can push the pocket.”
That first rep, Pryor said, didn’t go so well.
“You know it’s a loss when you have Stout [Eagles offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland] yelling at you in the backfield,” Pryor said.
» READ MORE: Eagles Week 11 film preview: What to look for vs. Lions
Even while watching the first-team defense face the scout team, Mailata could tell that Phillips would make an impact in Monday’s game. He was so quick off the edge that he had to ease up in the backfield to avoid creating a “pancake stack” with the quarterback.
He also demonstrated the effort to swarm to the football that has become a trademark of the Eagles defense under Fangio. That mentality stems from his high school days at Redlands East Valley, where Phillips emerged as one of the top prospects in the country in 2017.
“The better I got, the more dominant I was, people just started running away from me,” Phillips said. “So if I wanted to get tackles and stuff, I had to go chase the ball down on the other side. So I just started doing it, and it just became part of my game.”
Phillips didn’t have to chase anyone down on the opposite side of the field to make a play on Monday. Still, he picked up where he had left off with the Dolphins, where he had notched three sacks in his previous five games.
According to Next Gen Stats, Phillips created seven pressures on 36 pass rushes against the Packers, his most in any game since Week 18 of the 2022 season (nine against the New York Jets) and the second-most by an Eagle this season.
While he didn’t generate a sack of his own, he made one happen for his teammate. Phillips got the initial push up the middle of the pocket that forced Jordan Love to flee into the arms of Jalyx Hunt for his second sack in as many games.
He also stuffed Josh Jacobs for a loss of 4 yards on a critical fourth-and-1 late in the game as the Packers attempted a comeback. Those plays Phillips made throughout the night taught Moro Ojomo everything he needed to know about his new teammate.
“Someone that’s got great energy,” Ojomo said. “Someone that plays the game of football the way it’s supposed to be played. I think you saw that on film. The effort and getting to the ball and being disruptive. It’s always great to have another person in that room that can wreak havoc.”
Baun said he sees a bit of himself when he first arrived in Philly last year in Phillips. Like Phillips, Baun said he also felt the love right away, making him all the more eager to play hard for the team and the city. The All-Pro inside linebacker, previously a core special-teamer with the New Orleans Saints, also embraced the opportunity to start fresh, just like Phillips is now.
But Phillips has refused to let his injuries dictate his attitude or effort throughout his career. If anything, his injury history garners respect from his newfound teammates, considering what he had to overcome to play at the level he displayed on Monday.
He doesn’t need to wear an orange jersey to earn Mailata’s admiration, either.
“Only a true maniac can do that,” Mailata said of Phillips’ ability to overcome his serious injuries. “Like, Jaelan and Landon [Dickerson], those are two peas in a pod, just based off that. What they’ve had to overcome in college and in the NFL. Just insane.
“Those people are rare to come by because you don’t get many people who are willing to put everything on the line every day for the team.”
