For the first time in his NFL career, Eagles DB Cooper DeJean is experiencing sustained losing.
After Monday night’s 38-21 loss to Dallas extended Philadelphia’s skid to five games, the Eagles cornerback acknowledged the frustration mounting inside a locker room unaccustomed to this kind of stretch.
“It’s been tough to be honest,” Cooper DeJean said after an ugly 38-21 loss to the Dallas Cowboys where he and the defense were gashed for 416 yards with 204 coming on the ground.
“It’s been tough to lose games, to even lose snaps. Not to look in the past, but we made plays, plays that we made that we haven’t this season.”
DeJean and a defense expected to carry the Eagles while the offense adjusted to a new scheme have largely failed to deliver splash plays this season. They stopped Dallas from scoring on just two of its nine drives. Philadelphia also failed to record a tackle for a loss in the game for the first time since 2016 and went without a takeaway for the fifth time this season. The Eagles defense failed to generate a single quarterback hit or a sack of Dak Prescott, who had all the time he needed to dissect the defense. That lack of production comes from a group that has some of the biggest names in the league at all three levels of the defense.
While he wasn’t the lone culprit for the poor defensive showing, DeJean has not looked like the same player he was in his first two seasons.
It’s hard to pinpoint why DeJean is struggling the way he has this season.
Vic Fangio mentioned the neck stinger the third-year cornerback suffered in the Week 4 loss had been affecting the former second-round pick’s ability to be the sure-fire tackler he was during his college days at Iowa and in the first two seasons as a pro.
DeJean was beaten by CeeDee Lamb for the Cowboys’ first touchdown of the game. He’s not the only cornerback to surrender a score to one of the game’s best wideouts, but it was the fourth receiving touchdown the cornerback allowed on 40 targets. He allowed just one scoring reception across 125 targets in 2024 and 2025 combined per NextGen Stats.
DeJean is not a finished product. Coming on as strong as he did in his first two years as a pro, establishing himself as one of the game’s top nickel corners, earning an All-Pro selection and having a pick-six in a Super Bowl set the bar extremely high.
Not that the 23-year-old can’t return to form, but like many of Philadelphia’s young core players, DeJean is learning how to navigate the first prolonged losing stretch of his career.
In college with the Iowa Hawkeyes, DeJean suffered 13 total regular season losses in his three-year career and never endured dropping more than three games in a row.
“We have to look in the mirror, myself especially. There’s a lot of things we can grow from. Some good, some bad. We just have to come out and play better,” DeJean said.
He added: “We have to find a way to get better. There’s still a lot of growth to be had with the team, the defense and in the defensive back room. The biggest thing is staying together. We have a lot of good leaders on our team.”
Saquon Barkley, who tried to gut his way through the game coming back from a hamstring injury, took initiative to emphasize that message standing in as a vocal leader.
“I’m not really a big talker to be honest, but I felt the moment was right,” Barkley said.
“How I look at life, you never quit, you never give up, you keep fighting. I feel like we have the men in the locker room to do it. We put ourselves in the situation and now we gotta dig ourselves out of it.”
The Eagles won’t have much time to regroup as they prepare for a one-win Washington Commanders team coming off their bye in a Sunday night battle.
If they don’t, the losing streak will extend to six straight, a span not only the players in the locker room haven't experienced, but also one fans haven’t endured since 2012 when they lost eight in a row.
MORE: Eagles defense has no answers in 38-21 loss to Cowboys
