Mike Sielski: The Eagles are lucky Jalen Carter will play Sunday. They'll be luckier if Patrick Mahomes doesn't bait him, too.

Mike Sielski, The Philadelphia Inquirer on Sep 11, 2025

Published in Football

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PHILADELPHIA — As if the depth and breadth of Jalen Carter’s dumbness in spitting on Dak Prescott wasn’t immediately apparent Thursday night, the NFL’s oldest and wisest defensive coordinator spent a few minutes Tuesday making sure everyone understood it. Vic Fangio has a way of speaking — in short, declarative, bladelike sentences, no hemming or hawing — that cuts to the core of the matter. And as the Eagles waited to find out whether the league would suspend Carter and, if so, for how long, Fangio left no doubt that it had taken him a while to forgive Carter for his conduct — assuming Fangio had forgiven him.

“You’ve got to be focused on the job at hand,” he said, “and all the extracurricular stuff needs to not have any importance to you.”

It was an exam Carter flunked against the Dallas Cowboys. Prescott baited him into the most childish kind of reaction, into behavior that wouldn’t be tolerated on a playground, let alone on a professional football field, and Carter and the Eagles are fortunate that the NFL limited its punishment to a forfeiture of his Week 1 game check — a fine, effectively, of more than $57,000. Truth be told, as much as it hurt the Eagles to be without Carter on Thursday, they’re lucky. The NFL, in announcing its verdict, said that “because Carter was disqualified before participating in a single play, the suspension is considered to have been served.” Had the incident happened, say, early in the second quarter, it’s much likelier that the league would have suspended Carter for Sunday’s game.

In Kansas City, Mo. Against Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs.

Of all the reasons the Eagles routed the Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX, Carter was among the most significant and perhaps the least heralded. Yes, Jalen Hurts was the game’s MVP. Yes, Cooper DeJean serpentined his way to the end zone on that stunning interception and touchdown. But Carter was the equivalent of a selfless parent cooking a big Sunday dinner for family and friends: He let everyone else eat. When the Chiefs tried to block him one-on-one, they couldn’t handle him, and when they double-teamed him, they couldn’t hold up on the outside against the Eagles’ edge rushers. No way Carter’s teammates sack Mahomes six times and pick him off twice in that game without him. No way.

Now that Carter will be in the lineup Sunday, the Eagles have a shot to create the same sort of problems for and pressure on Mahomes. That’s their short-term concern, of course, but Carter revealed himself against the Cowboys to be a long-term worry — a potentially great player who can’t be trusted yet. The Eagles have the youngest defense in the NFL, and in another year, maybe a veteran who happens to be standing near Carter pulls him away from Prescott and tells him to smarten up.

Such are the perils of a unit with so much talent and so little savvy and experience, but no one should excuse Carter for what he did. He’s 24. He’s in his third NFL season. He’s the best player on the Eagles defense, and he should be moving toward taking a leadership role, and he should know better by now.

“To be considered a leader, actions speak louder than words,” Fangio said, “and he has to speak through his actions.”

Mahomes promises to push Carter’s buttons just like Prescott did. Every opponent the Eagles will face this season now has a blueprint to try to beat them: Get under the big kid’s skin. Get him off his game. Maybe even get him kicked out. At a minimum, Mahomes will look to lure the Eagles into an unnecessary roughness penalty with a maneuver he has mastered. When he scrambles out of the pocket and toward the sideline, he often forces a defender into a near-impossible choice: If the defender commits to tackling him, Mahomes quickly steps out of bounds to goad the officials into calling a late hit. If the defender presumes Mahomes will step out on his own, Mahomes can either tightrope the sideline for a few extra yards or, as he did Friday against the Los Angeles Chargers, run over the unsuspecting defender.

“You have to always be aware when you’re near the sideline for all those points you just brought up,” Fangio said. “One, the quarterback flopping, going out of bounds. Two, the quarterback lowering his shoulder and trying to get the last piece of business in there. You’ve got to play with good, bent knees and be ready for anything that happens. Mahomes is the ultimate competitor, and it doesn’t surprise me to see him do that.”

Everyone should expect to see Mahomes attempt it or a similar gambit Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium, and although the Eagles will have Carter and are better for his presence, the burden is on him now to prove that he can stay on the field. Fangio never says much, and he didn’t have to Tuesday to make it clear just how angry he was with Carter, because he knows the reality now: The Eagles will be patient with Carter, but no one else will be, least of all the NFL. Don’t screw this up, Jalen. Don’t screw it up.

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