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Philadelphia Eagles defensive tackle Jalen Carter waits for the start...

Philadelphia Eagles defensive tackle Jalen Carter waits for the start of the NFC Championship Game against the Washington Commanders on Jan. 26 in Philadelphia. Credit: AP/Chris Szagola

NEW ORLEANS — No one has heard much from Jalen Carter this week.

The Eagles’ second-year defensive tackle has spent most of the run-up to Super Bowl LIX battling flu symptoms. They prevented him from practicing fully during the team’s first few days of prep in New Orleans and kept him away from the media obligations all of the healthy members of the team must endure.

As kickoff drew closer, though, Carter began to regain his strength. By Friday, he was practicing and received no designation on the injury report, so he’ll be good to go.

And on Sunday? Despite barely uttering a word in the lead-up to the game, Carter is likely to impact it with a full-throated roar.

He has stood out as one of the biggest wreckers of game plans in these playoffs, dominating the Packers, Rams and Commanders in the middle of the line of scrimmage. It was his sack of Matthew Stafford late in the snowy Divisional game, followed by a pressure on a fourth-down pass, that saved the Eagles from an embarrassing collapse, continued their season and got them here.

He had a Pro Bowl-level regular season and has cranked it up in the postseason. In three games, he has two sacks, five quarterback hits, 12 pressures, two tackles for a loss, three passes batted down and a forced fumble. He has played 91.7% of the playoff snaps on defense.

He is elite, and such players require an equally impressive vocabulary.

So it is no wonder that players — the ones who have been doing the talking — have been referring to Carter with words such as “incredible,” “phenomenal” and “amazing.”

And those aren’t his teammates or coaches. Those come from the Kansas City offensive linemen who have to try to block him!

Kansas City defensive tackle Chris Jones, who has been a three-time All-Pro, was even more effusive about Carter.

“I have so much respect for his game,” Jones said. “Just pure dominance. So many things that the young kid can do. He’s a physical specimen.”

Carter has developed into more than that in his short time with the Eagles. He’s become a maestro on the field, improvising moves and stunts based on instinct and feel the way a player who has been in the league for a decade might.

“People don’t understand how sharp this guy is,” Eagles defensive line coach Clint Hurtt said of his prized pupil. “And not just book-smart but on the field, the ability to juggle and adjust within the game.”

“He’s been making plays, that’s been making him grow every week, because now he sees that he can be a terror in this league,” Eagles defensive end Brandon Graham said.

Carter did not come into the league as such a sure thing, at least beyond his football. He might have been one of the top one or two players taken in 2023, but his involvement in a two-car street racing crash at Georgia — which killed a teammate and a recruiting staffer who was driving the other car with more than twice the legal blood alcohol content — scared away some teams and led to an eventual plea of no-contest to two reckless driving charges for Carter. He reportedly avoided jail time with 12 months of probation, a $1,000 fine and 80 hours of community service.

The Eagles, though, felt they had the infrastructure to support Carter and traded up from 10th to ninth overall to pick him. Last year he played about half of the defensive snaps and still had six sacks to finish second in Defensive Rookie of the Year voting. This season he has become something of a rarity — a defensive tackle who plays nearly every down — and was named to the Pro Bowl and as a second-team All-Pro.

“I can’t say enough good things about his development as a player,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said. “In this league there are a lot of guys that are talented. It takes more than talent to reach your potential, and he’s continuing to rise. That speaks a lot to Jalen Carter.”

What makes Carter so dangerous in this game is not only that he is the strength of the Eagles’ defense but that he will be lining up against one of Kansas City’s weaknesses.

Kansas City juggled its offensive line late in the regular season, moving guard Joe Thuney to left tackle. That helped the team on the edge, but since that shift, Kansas City’s interior has allowed a pressure rate of 9.0%, according to NFL NextGen Stats, the fourth-highest rate in the NFL. Before the Thuney move, KC had been fourth-lowest at 5.1%.

Knowing that undoubtedly helped even the ailing Carter feel better.

When he did speak briefly last Monday before his symptoms prevented him from doing so any further, Carter expressed himself with a Zen-like attitude.

“I been on big stages before,” he said of his championship seasons with Georgia. “Two nattys. In those two games, I was pretty calm ... Seeing what I’ve seen, it keeps me calm. I’ve been through this.”

Georgia won those games.

Carter was asked for the key to stopping Mahomes in this championship game, the NFL’s version of a natty.

“One thing is to sack him,” he said. “If we can do that and get him off his game, I feel like we’ll win.”

That’ll be Carter’s job. He should be feeling up to it.

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