Meet Christian Parker, the coach behind the Eagles' rejuvenated CBs room

In the fleeting moments between periods of Eagles practice, Quinyon Mitchell has developed a counting ritual.

As the team breaks for special-teams drills, the first-round rookie cornerback heads toward an unoccupied field, finds his position coach, and resumes their shared pursuit of speeding along his development as quickly as possible.

Lined up across from Mitchell and sometimes impersonating whichever wide receiver he’ll be facing most often that following Sunday is Eagles defensive backs coach/pass-game coordinator Christian Parker. He’s the 32-year-old, Jordans-wearing, watch-collecting assistant coach behind the Eagles’ resurgent secondary and the one who initially caught Mitchell off guard with the insistence that they don’t waste time on the practice field.

“I’ve always believed in that,” Parker told The Inquirer. “If we’re out there on the grass, we don’t have that much time, so we might as well maximize it. It’s not full-speed stuff, it’s mainly just the training of the eyes and the feet and the hands and the technical development in all those things. Now, he’s used to the routine. At first, he might have thought it was a one-time thing, but we’re doing that every day.”

“I think he’s starting to look forward to it,” Parker added. “Primarily because I’m the receiver sometimes.”

Later in practice, when the offense goes through its installation and the defense has a spare moment, Mitchell’s fellow rookie cornerback Cooper DeJean and a few other secondary members will join in as well.

“He’s always trying to route us up,” DeJean said, smiling.

It’s a small thing, but an emblematic one when assessing the relationship the coach has developed with his youngest charges over the last few months. As both Mitchell and DeJean have slotted seamlessly into the Eagles’ defensive backfield, Parker’s contributions both with individual work during practice and an open-door policy in his office are hard to overlook.

“You’ll see him every day at practice bringing those two over to the side,” safety Reed Blankenship said. “I know they go up (to his office) a lot, both together and individually, so they just have that communication. That means a lot, especially as a rookie, having a coach like that who you can trust and go up to about anything. He’ll always have their back, and they’re really great players and especially great dudes, and he has a huge factor in that.”

‘Younger than Slay’

Christian Parker wanted to do a backflip, but he couldn’t crease his Jordans.

It was the second day of the NFL draft, Eagles general manager Howie Roseman had just added a second highly-touted prospect to Parker’s position room in as many days, and the newly hired assistant was nearly in disbelief.

“I didn’t think it was going to be possible,” Parker said. “So when that happened and Howie told me we were getting Coop, too, I would have done backflips in the hallway if I had some different footwear on.”

By his estimation, Parker’s collection includes about 400 pairs of sneakers, including roughly 300 pairs of Air Jordans as well as smaller collections of signature shoes from Kobe Bryant and LeBron James to more vintage collector’s pieces like Penny Hardaway’s signature sneakers and Nike “Foamposites” hailing back to the 1990s.

“It probably started from my aunt,” Parker said. “My mom had one older sister, she passed a couple years back. She didn’t have any kids, so I was hers. It was kind of our thing, Space Jam and Jordan and that kind of thing. I just got kind of into loving the design and how they got matched up with different elements of his career, too.”

Parker’s affinity for fashion, which extends to watches as well, is one of the several common threads between him and the players he coaches.

The music he plays in his meeting room, including Jay-Z and J. Cole, and the tendency to occasionally poke fun at his players during the lighter moments of the week serve as the balancing act for what he demands of the group.

When asked which players he’s hardest on, most in the position group agree Blankenship gets the worst of it with Mitchell coming in as a close second.

“I’m one of those guys where, anything you say I can get a little sensitive about and give you a reaction,” Blankenship said. “I started to realize that, like, ‘OK, they’re just doing that just to get a reaction out of me,’ because I’m one of those guys that will give them a reaction. Then that will just fuel the fire.”

Parker gets it back from his players at times. Most agree he doesn’t act his age, but that won’t stop them from reminding him at times of his most notable elder in the meeting room: 33-year-old Darius Slay.

“Younger than Slay is the first thing I think of,” cornerback Isaiah Rodgers said. “But he’s an old soul, Jay-Z fan, loves music, he just fits in the room perfectly. He’s been around coaching for a while, so he acts like an old head. And that’s good because we need it, but when we’re in our Indy drills, he’s moving around with us.”

Safety Tristin McCollum added, “He’s up on the culture. He’s cracking jokes, making fun of players, he definitely makes the meeting space less tense. That goes a long way for players’ mentals.”

Ready for it

It didn’t take long for Parker to realize both Mitchell and DeJean would be ready for significant roles in the Eagles’ defense relatively early in their careers.

Watching Mitchell in one-on-one drills against A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smiththe former Toledo standout’s play during his reps and the demeanor afterward foretold his smooth integration into the team’s starting secondary before Week 1. DeJean’s moment came later because of a hamstring injury that held him out of most of training camp, but the team’s switch to him as the starting nickel cornerback has coincided with the defense’s most dominant stretch of the season coming out of the bye week.

“You knew there was the chance,” Parker said. “But you still don’t know until they get thrown into the fire. So, for Q, it was Green Bay, first third-down, they run a double move on him and he responds against Christian Watson in the end zone. You saw he was ready for that. For Coop, probably that first series where he goes through the game against Cleveland. He just comes off and the dialogue coming off the field, the recall and everything, you go, ‘OK, this guy is ready for the NFL stadium.’”

The Eagles entered the offseason deeply in need of rebuilding a secondary that ranked near the bottom of several metrics in the 2023-24 season and did so both in free agency in the draft. Roseman signed safety CJ Gardner-Johnson in free agency, drafted Mitchell No. 21 overall, and traded up 10 spots the following day to get DeJean 40th overall after the former Iowa standout slid into the second round.

The injection of talent — along with changes to the coaching staff that brought in Vic Fangio as defensive coordinator and a cast of his former assistants that included Parker — has led to an about-face for the group in the last 12 months. Last season, the Eagles ranked 31st in passing yards allowed, 31st in third-down efficiency, and 29th in defense-adjusted value over average against the pass. By comparison, this season the group ranks 10th in passing yards allowed, 20th in third-down efficiency, and 15th in DVOA with their most dominant performances coming in the last three weeks.

With a handful of appointments brought on by Fangio, Parker’s appointment may have flown under the radar at first. The Flemington, NJ native who played college football at Virginia State worked on Fangio’s staff with the Denver Broncos in 2021. He spent another two seasons with the Broncos after Fangio was fired, playing a part in the development of All-Pro cornerback Patrick Surtain II .

“His knowledge of the game was way beyond his years,” Surtain told The Inquirer earlier this week. “Especially early on. … That’s a testament to his work ethic, his understanding, and his knowledge of the game.”

Surtain also noted the balance between Parker’s approach and Fangio’s as an old-school coach known for not mincing words.

“It’s a good balance,” Surtain said. “You want that hard-nosed coach that would get on you sometimes, but then you also have a laid-back coach who knows how to bring the best out of you in his own way. It was a good balance between the two of them and their relationship and their bond speaks volumes about both of them.”

‘Chasing perfection’

Parker was reluctant to draw too many comparisons between his time coaching Surtain or the two years he spent as a quality control coach with the Green Bay Packers working with Jaire Alexander to what he’s currently undertaking with the Eagles’ pair of rookies.

One applicable thing, though, is starting by addressing the types of things a young corner may be too bashful to ask themselves.

“NFL 101,” as Parker puts it, includes establishing where the hashes are, where the numbers are relative to them, and what certain route concepts are trying to accomplish. It also includes Kahoot games, where players compete to see who can answer questions about the scheme and game situations the fastest.

“All those guys are talented, they’re here for a reason,” Parker said. “So you just want to be hard-sold on little details that it takes.”

Those details are often combined over in separate meetings or texts between him, Mitchell, and DeJean. The pair have made a habit of testing Parker’s open-door policy by dropping in at random times, although Parker has one requirement if they’re going to stop by.

“I tell them that they need to come in with questions,” Parker said. “They usually come in with a purpose to start off and I take it from there. … It’s just kind of getting supplemental stuff that maybe might not be appropriate for the whole room, but is more kind of focused toward them.”

One week, they snuck into his office early and turned off the lights to get back on the coach that’s always needling them.

“He had no idea,” DeJean said. “He walked in and we, like jump-scared him.”

Parker’s most cutting jabs at both the pair of rookies and the veteran corner Rodgers recently have been tied to the lack of interceptions from the group despite their collective opportunities. The Eagles have three interceptions so far this season, all of which have come from Gardner-Johnson and Blankenship.

Joking aside, Rodgers said Parker predicted his key pass-breakup in relief of an injured Slay against the Bengals before it happened. The 26-year-old batted the pass intended for Bengals star receiver Ja’Marr Chase into Gardner-Johnson’s grasp for a fourth-quarter interception.

It was more warning than prophecy. Rodgers hadn’t been tested this season and was matched up with one of the league’s best wideouts in Chase, Parker explained. It was only a matter of time before Cincinnati threw a deep shot against the reserve corner.

“He actually told me I was going to make that big play,” Rodgers said. “He told me I was going to pick it, and I didn’t. I told him I was going to pick it and bring him the ball and I didn’t do that, so now he’s telling me to go get him one this week.”

Rodgers, who is expected to start on Sunday against the Jacksonville Jaguars, isn’t the only one hoping to bring the ball back to the secondary coach. Mitchell leads the team with six pass breakups and has come close to his first career interception countless times this season.

The latter fact is one Parker is quick to remind him often these days.

“He’s always talking about my hands and me not catching the ball,” Mitchell said. “It’s all from the heart, I know it’s all love. …He’s chasing perfection.

“I feel like he does that for a reason. I feel like he sees something in me.”

The Eagles play the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 9. Join Eagles beat reporters Olivia Reiner and EJ Smith as they dissect the hottest storylines surrounding the team on Game Day Centrallive from Lincoln Financial Field.