Inside the eight-cylinder mind of Vic Fangio: Eagles’ guru is one step from an elusive Super Bowl title

Fangio has led a full life — boyfriend, father, grandfather, protégé, colleague, mentor, coach, and friend. Those close to him confirm that what you see is what you get, on and off the field.

Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio has been a Philly sports fan since his childhood.Read moreDavid Maialetti / Staff Photographer

by Jeff McLane

Published Feb. 5, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET

NEW ORLEANS — Vic Fangio still owns the 2012 Lexus LS 460 he purchased preowned in 2019. He refuses to sell it even though his girlfriend, Kathy Maruyama, keeps asking.

“Even last night, I told him, ‘Oh, I washed the car.’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, it looks great,’” Maruyama said. “He says, ‘I’m never gonna sell that car.’ I said, ‘Never?’ He loves that car.”

The black Lexus may be on the older side — Fangio says it has around 120,000 miles on it — but he has his reasons for keeping it.

“Reliable,” Fangio said this week, “and paid for.”

There isn’t much about Fangio that changes. From his durable scheme to his steely demeanor, from his eight-cylinder mind to the throwback gray sweatpants he wears to practice, the Eagles defensive coordinator has stayed true to himself despite the passage of time.

Fangio has amassed a lot of tread in football, but the 66-year-old and his defense remain vanguards in the NFL. To suggest that he is incapable of change would be remiss. He is always adapting to the ever-evolving league, if not quite modern alterations to the game and player tastes.

But Fangio has remained steadfast in his core beliefs: the importance of repetition, detail, and diligence. In just one season, he turned the Eagles’ defense around, from bottom-dweller to one of the best — a chief reason that they’re back in the Super Bowl just two years after they fell agonizingly short against the Chiefs.

Sunday’s rematch with Kansas City offers the Eagles a shot at redemption and much more. For Fangio, it gives him the opportunity to change one thing about his 38-year NFL career: a missing championship.

He got close 12 years ago, and while he told The Inquirer before the season that he doesn’t think about the one blemish on his otherwise stellar resumé, he spoke of an early-morning walk of frustration after the 49ers lost to the Ravens, 34-29, in Super Bowl XLVII.

It was about as close as the taciturn Fangio gets to public introspection. He doesn’t reveal much to his loved ones, either.

“There was a report — I don’t know who said it — that said they’ve never heard him laugh before,” Maruyama said recently. “All day I’m trying to, when I see him, I’m trying to make him laugh. And, you know, it’s kind of hard. The only time I’ve seen him laugh is when he’s on the golf course, and he sinks a 30-foot putt or something.

“He’s really excited about that.”

But a win in New Orleans? Back where he started his NFL coaching career under former Saints coach Jim Mora? Back to the site of the most crushing loss of his career, when his San Francisco defense picked the wrong week to have its worst first half of the 2012-13 season?

It would be kismet in a year that has already brought Fangio full circle in returning to Philadelphia, where the Dunmore, Pa., native got his first professional coaching job, and where he won two titles with Mora and the Stars of the USFL.

If the Eagles win their second Super Bowl, he’ll likely smile, and he’ll likely celebrate. But he’s unlikely to show much emotion, just as he did wandering the French Quarter after the opposite result a dozen years ago.

“He does it in a quiet way,” Mora said. “He’s not going to stand up in front of the press and scream and shout and yell and do all those kind of things. He’ll express his feelings the way he feels he should, and only he will know how he’s handling it.

“He’s not going to talk a lot about it, but he feels it just like any coach does that loses a tough game.”

Last Wednesday at NovaCare Complex, Fangio showed film from Super Bowl XLVII during his first meeting of the week. He told his players how the 49ers got off to a jittery start and weren’t ready for the constant breaks in action and how early mistakes cost them when their comeback was halted just 5 yards short, several Eagles said.

But Fangio made no mention of his plight. Veterans like Brandon Graham and Darius Slay said they knew their coach had never won the big one. Youngsters like Reed Blankenship and Milton Williams said they had to be told.

Fangio might be the most influential defensive mind of the last two decades, but that doesn’t guarantee anything when there are so many variables at play. His counterpart on Sunday, the Chiefs’ Steve Spagnuolo, has already won four Super Bowls, but even he wouldn’t say that makes him four times the coach.

Ed Donatell was by Fangio’s side for a decade — his defensive backs coach with the 49ers and Bears and then his coordinator when Fangio was head coach of the Broncos. He won two titles early in his career during his first stint in Denver. But the pressure of following up taught him a lesson about riding the capricious waves of the NFL.

“Sometimes you just get fortunate,” Donatell said. “It’s not just one guy, and that’s why I’m really rooting for Vic to get that, to just get it out of there. Check that off, you know? And it’s wonderful, but trophies get dusty, and so do the rings.

“Your relationships don’t.”

Fangio has led a full life, by various accounts. Boyfriend, father, grandfather, protégé, colleague, mentor, coach, and friend — he checks all those boxes. Those close to him confirm that what you see is what you get when it comes to his bluntness and gruff exterior.

But there is more behind what’s on screen: the binding loyalty, the peculiar sense of humor, the searches for hole-in-the-wall Italian eateries. And, of course, what goes on inside his beautiful mind. Only Fangio knows.

This season, he’s made a habit of taking half-laps around the field about four hours before kickoff. An avid walker, he said he’s just getting steps in or getting a feel for the conditions. But mostly, he’s in his head. And it’s full of X’s and O’s.

“It never shuts down,” Fangio said, “until you’re asleep.”

Even temperament

Fangio is more about the next game, series, or play than he is about looking back. But the loss in New Orleans 12 years ago, understandably, kept him up that night.

“Kath said, ‘Where are you going?’” Fangio said in September. “I said, ‘I’m just going to go walk around town.’ I’m walking around the French Quarter by myself. You’re frustrated you didn’t get it done and can’t sleep. So, yeah, it’s not a good feeling.

“But I’m more about the process and the game-to-game stuff than the big overall picture. And if you get good enough and get another chance, you got to take advantage of it.”

Maruyama said she didn’t recall the moment. Not that she could have provided more insight, had she remembered.

“Even if he comes back from a walk, he doesn’t say what he was thinking about because he’s — not introverted — but he’s introspective,” Maruyama said, “and he doesn’t talk that much about what he’s thinking. He kind of processes it himself.”

Mora, who had Fangio follow him from the Stars to the Saints, and, lastly, to the Colts as his defensive coordinator, said his assistant wouldn’t often speak up nor make arguments during staff meetings. But if Mora wanted an honest opinion, he’d circle back with Fangio.

“If I really wanted to know something, if I wanted to make sure what input I’m getting from a coach, whether it’s something I liked or didn’t like, I’d go to Vic, and he’d tell me,” Mora said. “He was always going to tell you. He wasn’t going to say something that he didn’t really believe.”

Fangio is direct and “doesn’t talk just for the sake of talking,” a phrase Maruyama and others used to describe him. He avoids cliched coach-speak and has set records in news conferences for the number of questions answered. He’ll offer critiques of players, only softened from what he tells them to their faces.

“He’s not throwing bouquets the whole time,” Donatell said. “But he says it in a pretty good way: ‘Hey, you know that guy, he can play better.’ And he knows it, right? He’ll say, ‘That wasn’t our best tackling.’ He’ll tell you.”

According to former 49ers safety Donte Whitner, the criticism always comes “with an even temperament.” There was talk of a generational divide between Fangio and Dolphins players last season in Miami. But even though he’s more than 40 years older than the average age of an Eagles defender, he finds ways to connect.

Players, ultimately, want to be placed in positions that make them successful.

No matter who a player is or how much he is paid, if he makes a mistake, Fangio is “gonna let you know in front of everybody,” Williams said. “And I feel like that’s what the best coaches do, because if you show favoritism to one player, then everybody gonna be like, ‘Well, you let him do that, I can do it.’

“If you get [upset] about that, then that’s on you.”

Fangio may break the monotony with a joke. It may come at the players’ expense — a tease here and needle there — based on their preferences in music, clothes, and fandom. When he was in Denver, Fangio took Eagles defensive backs coach Christian Parker, then a young Broncos assistant, to a 76ers-Nuggets game.

Fangio grew up following Philly teams — the Eagles, Phillies, and Sixers. Parker was a Bulls fan who switched his allegiance after moving to Denver.

“He’s a typical fan his age … fan of players, not teams, which drives me crazy,” Fangio said. “I mean, how can you be a fan of a player and not a team? But that’s today’s generation. I just don’t like it. You got to be loyal to your team.”

A few players and coaches can get him to laugh, or at least flash a smile, particularly Eagles defensive linemen Josh Sweat and Jordan Davis. But Fangio mostly only chuckles when he’s delivering the punch line.

“He’ll laugh at his own joke if he’ll crack one,” Williams said. “But that’s about it. … Some old [stuff] that nobody knows.”

Maruyama said she makes suggestions to Fangio about his defense and how his pass rushers should use more spin moves or fake-rush in one direction, since offensive linemen can’t see where the quarterback dropped back.

“He doesn’t think those are good ideas,” she said.

Fangio said he wished he laughed more.

“That’s a negative,” he said. “I remember when Jim Valvano gave that famous speech: You gotta laugh, cry, what else did he say? Do it all. I’m a little light on the laughing.”

But Fangio does have a sense of humor.

“I think he’s kind of always been competitive,” Maruyama said. “As a kid, his mother would tell you he always wanted to win at all costs. When he was in elementary school, junior high, and high school, he always kind of teased other kids. That’s his humor.”

Kiddie coaches

Fangio was born in Dunmore in 1958, the middle child of five with two older brothers and a younger brother and sister. His father, Vic Sr., was a tailor. His mother, Alice, still lives in the three-bedroom, one-bathroom home on Electric Street in which he was raised.

A few blocks away is the playground where Joe Marciano met Fangio. He was working a college summer job as an instructor, and Fangio, a high schooler at the time, was umpiring Little League games.

“If Vic didn’t pursue football,” Marciano said, “I guarantee you he would have been an umpire in the World Series.”

Said Fangio: “I could have. I was good.”

Fangio’s love of baseball and the Phils has never waned. But he got hooked on football while attending coaching clinics at East Stroudsburg University. He was a graduate assistant at North Carolina when Marciano recommended him to Mora and Stars defensive coordinator Vince Tobin.

“It was maybe the best hire I ever made in my time being a coach,” Mora, 89, says now, “because this guy’s special.”

Marciano lived with Fangio in the Prospect Park section of Delaware County — a couple of “goombah bachelors,” he called them. He said Fangio proved his bona fides to Mora by coming up with the “Zone Dog” blitz — a type of pressure that was virtually unheard of in 1984 — to stop Birmingham Stallions quarterback Cliff Stoudt.

“I remember when Jim Valvano gave that famous speech: You gotta laugh, cry, what else did he say? Do it all. I’m a little light on the laughing.”
Vic Fangio

Long story short, it involved blitzing linebackers and dropping the nose guard to make the quarterback throw “hot” to outlets who would be bracketed in coverage.

“Vince Tobin said, ‘We ain’t gonna do that.’ And Jim Mora, to his credit, said, ‘Wait a minute, we might have something here,’” Marciano said. “And it worked like Vic said it would. … I think from that day on, in Jim Mora’s eyes, he got instant credibility.”

Fangio, who doesn’t blitz much now, said he couldn’t take credit for being first. Mora said he couldn’t recall the scenario.

“Give Vic the credit,” he said. “He’s a smart guy and wants to try these things, and they usually work out.”

When the Saints lured Mora to the NFL, he wanted to bring most of his Stars staff, including Marciano, to be special teams coordinator, and Fangio, to oversee linebackers.

Hall of Fame general manager Jim Finks didn’t think the two young assistants were ready for the big time, according to Marciano. Mora stood his ground, and when he held his first staff meeting, Finks held Fangio and Marciano back.

“He called us ‘kiddie coaches,’” Marciano said. “And he said, ‘Kiddie coaches, remember two things, the players back there, they work for you. You don’t work for them.’ And the other one, I can’t tell you. … I can’t let you print that one.”

The new regime turned the losing franchise around in just a couple of years. The “Dome Patrol” defense was led by linebackers Sam Mills, Rickey Jackson, Pat Swilling, and Vaughan Johnson. In Fangio’s nine seasons in New Orleans, the foursome earned 16 Pro Bowl nods and 10 All-Pro selections.

Mora’s defensive coordinator, Dom Capers, took Fangio with him when he got the expansion Panthers’ head coaching job, but Mora and Fangio were reunited in Indianapolis. The Colts went to the postseason two straight seasons, but in 2001 missed the “Playoffs?” — as Mora famously yelled during an apoplectic news conference — and the coach and his coordinator were fired.

Capers had another expansion job waiting for Fangio as his defensive lieutenant with the Texans. It didn’t go well. Houston went 18-46 in four seasons, with Fangio’s unit finishing last in the league in points and 31st in yards allowed by 2005. He then went back to coaching linebackers with the Ravens.

“I don’t want to say it was a turning point, but that’s kind of where it changed, right?” Fangio said. “Because up to that point, I had always been with [head coaches] that I came into the league with.”

Death by inches

Fangio didn’t get another opportunity to lead a defense until 2010 at Stanford. It was around the time he met Maruyama, who had an optometry practice in San Francisco.

“I met him at a local restaurant, like, after a game,” she said. “Just random.”

When the 49ers hired Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh, Fangio followed him and got to stay in the area. In San Francisco, his defense instantly became one of the NFL’s best. As a coordinator, he had good units before, but a talented crop of players, led by linebackers Patrick Willis and NaVorro Bowman, took his scheme to another level.

That didn’t mean Fangio didn’t have to coach up his personnel or move pieces around. Whitner credited the coach with changing the trajectory of his career. After five seasons with the Bills, the safety signed with the 49ers in 2011, and Fangio challenged him.

“I remember vividly one day before practice when he could tell that I was worn down, a little tired during the dog days of practice and camps,” Whitner said. “And he was like, ‘Whitner, you have all the skills to be one of the top safeties. … The only difference is you have to perform and lock in and focus on the days when you don’t feel like doing it.’

“And right there, a light bulb went off, bang. So it was a standard.”

Fangio made Whitner the play caller, when the responsibility typically fell to a linebacker. He moved Ahmad Brooks, who had languished at inside linebacker, to the edge. Fangio did the opposite with Eagles linebacker Zack Baun this season, taking him from the edge to off-ball, and it had an even greater impact.

“Other coaches will disregard a player like that,” Whitner said of Brooks. “They won’t find another role for him to take the defense to another level if he can’t pick it up. ‘He’s not smart enough.’ Well, the great innovators, they find a role for you and find a way for you to comprehend it so you can help.”

Fangio’s scheme, though, became his calling card. While not exotic, it was hard on offenses and was soon copied by other teams.

“We always tried to make something that felt complicated, but was simple for us,” Donatell said. “When people look at him they saw, ‘Oh, they just do this.’ But everything is so calculated that he does. There are a lot of people out there that you’ll find with higher pressure numbers. His are very low because he does the unexpected.

“And so, his defense is more sustainable over the years because it’s built on sound principles.”

Fangio’s coverages are deceptive for several reasons. Pre-snap, he positions his back seven so that one zone may look like another or even man defense. But post-snap is where quarterbacks have the most trouble because he’s given his players leeway to adapt based on the route and the receiver.

“We had probably 20 different coverages, and within those coverages we always had an ‘Oh, by the way,’” Whitner said. “If their best player lines up here, he gives the players the freedom to change the coverage, to take away their No. 1 threat. … Nothing that he does is static.”

Donatell said the defense was designed with slowing tier-one quarterbacks in mind. Fangio has his defensive backs positioned so they don’t give away their leverage down to the post-snap millisecond, and that forces top passers off their first reads.

Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ 8-0 record vs. Fangio has been an oft-repeated statistic the last two weeks, but Fangio’s defenses in those games never had a complementary offense with as much firepower as this Eagles team.

He will try to take away explosive passes with two-high safety shells and force Mahomes into taking the check down or audibling into runs vs. light boxes. It may frustrate Eagles fans raised on the aggressive defenses of Buddy Ryan and Jim Johnson, but it’s emblematic of Fangio’s philosophy on football.

He wants to win via “death by inches.” Marciano said he coined the phrase back in their Philly days when he saw Mora order his players to redo a stretch because a few weren’t lined up properly. Marciano said he questioned his boss because the Stars already were successful.

“He says, ‘You guys got to learn as young coaches, when things are going good, that’s the time to get on them,’” Marciano said. “That’s what I interpreted as no ‘death by inches.’ If it’s not important for him to get on the line during stretch, then maybe it’s not important for him to line up onside in a critical situation or line up in the correct technique in a certain defense.

“It’s the little things like that.”

It can be applied to the opponent, as well.

“He feels that if you’re not detailed, you will die by inches,” Donatell said. “That’s the way I interpret it. … He’ll make you work for it, and then you make a mistake.”

Fangio’s defense, in turn, must play with discipline and physicality, hallmarks of this season’s group. Two years ago, Mahomes beat the Eagles in the Super Bowl vs. a similar scheme. Then-coordinator Jonathan Gannon dialed up a solid first half, but he called it too conservatively after the break, and the Chiefs ran successfully.

Gannon left for the Cardinals after the loss, but Fangio had already committed to the Dolphins. Eagles coach Nick Sirianni wanted to keep the system and hired acolyte Sean Desai based on Fangio’s recommendation.

Desai and Gannon may have employed Fangio’s defense, but only he knows all the details. In training camp, he said he kept his own system of analytics and didn’t share with others. Donatell said he may be the closest to knowing.

“He has the ability to put all that information into his brain,” Donatell said. “We’ll go back years in our studies. It’s computers and codes. He really understands that. And then he can just erase it after the game and just start putting in other stuff. He doesn’t get confused. It’s a special capacity.”

But Fangio’s greatest gift may be his recall and ability to make the appropriate calls from the booth at the last possible moment.

“He can wait on his call. He can see when the offense is ready, when their call’s gone in. He knows how much time he can give himself,” Donatell said. “A quick mind matters. Tons of people can put playbooks together and get on the chalkboard. But he has rapid cognition.”

Life opportunities

At home, Fangio processes at a much slower pace. There isn’t as much pressure.

“It kind of surprises me that he can think so quickly on his feet calling plays because in real life, just day-to-day household stuff, he doesn’t make decisions quickly,” Maruyama said. “He has to think about things. … I say we should get a new car for the Lexus. And he’s like, ‘Uh …’ he just puts that off.”

Fangio’s career, in some ways, can be broken into halves — before Stanford and after. Or maybe before Maruyama and after. He had successful defenses in the first half of his NFL career, but he didn’t become a brand until Fangio 2.0.

“We still do stuff today that we did right here [in New Orleans] in ’86,” Fangio said. “The offense controls the game in what you have to defend both formationally and play-wise. So you gotta always evolve.”

His friends say he hasn’t changed much over the years, but if there has been a personal evolution, they credit Maruyama. The couple likes to golf together. Fangio got his handicap down to a 7 during his sabbatical in 2022. Maruyama said he’s around a 12 now, closer to her 15, but he doesn’t give her strokes.

“Hell no,” Fangio said.

Donatell said Fangio calculates his way around a course and keeps the yapping to a minimum. Mora has had him out to Palm Desert, Calif., to play.

“He just loves to be on a golf course,” Maruyama said. “There’s nothing better in his spare time, that is. And I’m trying to get him into pickleball, but maybe that’s in another life.”

They like to eat out and discover hidden Italian restaurants. Ravanesi Pizzeria in Glen Mills, where they serve only pizza and the dough has to be ordered in advance, has been a favorite. There isn’t time for much else during the season.

“He leaves the house at 5:30 a.m., and he doesn’t come home till 10 p.m.,” Maruyama said.

In the offseason, they visit his 97-year-old mother, who still climbs the steps and hosts spaghetti and meatball dinners for local family at her home. Fangio’s children from his first marriage — son Christian and daughter Cassie — live in the Maryland area.

He has two grandchildren — Christian’s 2-year-old son, Xavier, and 6-month-old daughter, Maggie. He hasn’t chosen a name for them to call him.

“He’s curious. I think that he doesn’t say what he wants [them] to call him,” Maruyama said. “He says, ‘Whatever comes out, comes out.’”

Fangio walks much more when there isn’t football — tracking steps on his Apple Watch — on the treadmill or outside with Maruyama. He doesn’t say much. Maruyama said she didn’t know Fangio visited Mills a few times before he died of cancer in 2005 until a reporter brought it up.

“He doesn’t even tell me those things … so it’s not like he does it to get recognition,” Maruyama said. “He just does it and doesn’t tell anybody unless they ask. But then he got invited to the Hall of Fame ceremony a couple years ago for Sam by his family because they knew what he meant to Sam.”

Fangio went to Willis’ Hall of Fame induction last summer and remains close to Jackson, another of his former players with a gold jacket. He remains loyal to his assistants, as Mora was to him.

“I know that there’s been times when they maybe wanted to replace a coach or something,” Donatell said, “and if he didn’t think it was fair, it wouldn’t happen.”

Many former colleagues are rooting for Fangio, Donatell said. Mora said he texts him every game day. Marciano said he tries to be the first to send him a message in the morning of and after the game.

“I wish him that all your third downs be long,” Marciano said.

Mora never won a Super Bowl. He had good teams with the Saints and Colts, but he went 0-6 in the playoffs. Marciano, a longtime special teams coordinator in the NFL, got closest with the Buccaneers, who lost to the Rams’ “Greatest Show on Turf” team in the 2000 NFC championship.

Donatell said he couldn’t sleep after the Niners lost to the Ravens in 2013.

“Nobody sleeps after you lose,” he said. “We went to the party, and the party is no good. You look at people, and it’s just dead. You’re messed up, you know? It’s hard, man. These are lifetime opportunities. And the higher up you go, the more they sting.”

Whitner said he went back to his room and cried “over and over and over.”

“Our 2011-13 defenses [don’t] go down in NFL history as one of the best, if not the best ever, because we didn’t seal the deal and capture that Super Bowl,” he said. “I guarantee you it still bothers Vic Fangio because it particularly bothers me.”

The Eagles all have individual reasons for wanting to beat the Chiefs. But Graham, Slay, Williams, Blankenship, Davis and other players said they hope the old coach finally gets to hoist the Lombardi Trophy.

He may even smile. They saw him flash a grin after the NFC championship victory over the Commanders. Maruyama saw it, too. He was proud of his unit. If the Eagles win on Sunday, it’s likely that Fangio’s defense — just like his 2012 Lexus — was reliable once again.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Davis said. “That goes for his car and that goes for his defense.”

Despite Fangio’s fondness for the Lexus, he doesn’t drive it to work much. He also has a 2023 Cadillac Lyriq, an electric car of all things.

“Traveling in an electric car is a hassle, but day to day, it’s good,” Fangio said. “It’s a lease. It’ll be up here in a couple months. So we’ll see what I do.”