Joe Kasper isn’t the type to map out the next rung on the coaching ladder. The Eagles’ newly minted defensive passing game coordinator says he’s too locked into the day-to-day work to spend much time staring down the road.
When he was asked Wednesday how he thinks about a long-term career path after landing on The Athletic’s 40-under-40 list of rising NFL coaches, Kasper didn’t try to dress up the answer.
“I’m not gonna answer this well,” he said. “I don’t do much to prepare for a long-term trajectory.
I know that’s probably not the best answer, but I really actively, like I’m consumed by what we’re doing right now. So, for me, I don’t really look at that.”
That approach fits the coach he has followed for much of this rise: Vic Fangio. Kasper said he felt out of his depth when Fangio brought him to Miami as safeties coach in 2023, but the experience pushed him to sharpen everything.
“When Vic hired me as a safeties coach in Miami, I was woefully unprepared, and then I worked real hard to be super prepared,” Kasper said. “Then, went from there.”
The path has been steady and pretty easy to trace. Kasper, a Mentor, Ohio native and Baldwin Wallace product, first connected with Fangio in 2022, when Fangio was serving as a consultant in Philadelphia on the way to Super Bowl LVII and Kasper was working as a quality-control coach.
A year later, Fangio took him to the Dolphins. When Fangio returned to the Eagles as defensive coordinator in 2024, Kasper came back too, this time as safeties coach. And after Christian Parker left this offseason to become Dallas’s defensive coordinator, Kasper got bumped up to defensive passing game coordinator, a move Fangio had joked about earlier in the offseason.
In Fangio’s world, the title matters less than the work. Kasper is still his secondary coach, just with a newer label attached.
Kasper said getting comfortable in Miami came down to the grind.
“You just work really hard,” he said. “You work really hard, and you study, and you decide what is Vic’s vision for what we’re trying to accomplish here and you try and complement him as best you can.”
What stands out to Kasper most about Fangio isn’t just the scheme. It’s the way the veteran coach carries himself as a mentor.
“Vic’s awesome as a mentor,” Kasper said. “Just watching this process and being able to be a part of that, being able to see how he evaluates guys, evaluates opponents, finds weaknesses, finds our complements. Those are all great things.
“Interpersonally, he’s a really good friend. Like, he’s a really great mentor to have. He’s got a wealth of experiences.”
Kasper also pushed back on the gruffer image Fangio sometimes projects from the outside.
“I think probably everybody always sees maybe the crustier side of him, but he’s a nice guy to work with,” said Kasper. “Like, I enjoy coming to work with him every day.
We have a lot of fun. We make a lot of jokes.”
He even has a running scoreboard of sorts with Fangio, who is a Phillies fan, while Kasper roots for the Cleveland Guardians.
“I’m a big Cleveland Guardians fan, so every series that we’ve won, we’ve won the last two against the Phillies, so I’m very blessed to have that up on [him].”
The biggest lesson Kasper takes from Fangio is the constant motion of the defense itself. Fangio’s system has become one of the most copied in the league, but Kasper said the coach never lets it sit still.
“One of his best traits is he’s ever evolving, ever adjusting, and tweaking, and changing, and getting better, and staying on top of things,” Kasper said. “We’re always looking for that new thing or that edge that can create an advantage for us. That’s definitely part of the secret sauce.”
That edge can come from anything - third-down tendencies, second-and-pass looks, whatever gives the defense a little more leverage.
“We’re always tweaking, we’re not ever sitting static,” said Kasper. “And because of that, you’re constantly learning and evolving both as an individual coach, which gives you an advantage as an individual coach, but also as a unit, too.”
For someone who says he doesn’t think much about what comes next, Kasper’s rise has followed a clean, direct line: quality control, his first positional job under Fangio, a Super Bowl ring with the Eagles in 2024, and now another promotion after Parker’s departure.
With the right mentor, he’s never really had to sketch out the future.
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