Doug Pederson Is Safe, but for How Long?
Following the 2017 season, the Philadelphia Eagles had laid the groundwork for franchise success for the foreseeable future barring a set of unforeseen circumstances.
Coming off the first Super Bowl in franchise history, the biggest question the Eagles brass had to answer was could they contain Broad Street long enough to get to and through the longest awaited parade in the history of sports.
Of course, there were the impending questions surrounding the health of their franchise quarterback heading into 2018. Still, with the reigning Super Bowl MVP in the wings and the man responsible for crafting an offense strictly to his strengths back, the sky was the limit for Philadelphia. We’re talking annual playoff appearances, new norms, and a repeat of history as the days of the Eagles reigning supreme over the NFC had returned upon us.
Of course in typical Philadelphia fashion, unforeseen circumstances struck and these dreams never came to fruition.
What does the NFL stand for? Of course, to you or I, these three letters are the initials of the greatest sport on the planet; the National Football League. However, if you ask any coach, player, or executive from both past and present, they would tell you the acronym has an entirely different meaning.
Not. For. Long.
Needless to say, it’s a what have you done for me lately league and well lately? Bad things are happening in Philadelphia.
“I felt like the guys were ready to go. You know, I’m obviously disappointed and it’s on me that we played the way that we did today. You know, quite honestly. But I thought the energy was good it’s difficult without the fans but both teams have to deal with it and you can’t make excuses for it. And we cannot; we’ve got to stop shooting ourselves in the foot. That’s the bottom line! All three phases had a hand in this loss today.” – Doug Pederson
“Shooting ourselves in the foot” as Pederson said is putting it lightly. The Eagles are currently tied for tenth in the league with 61 penalties on the year, rank third in both giveaways (20) and turnover differential (-9), and currently, sits at 24th in the league averaging 22.0 points per game. For weeks Pederson and Wentz have both referred to the problems surrounding the franchise’s recent play as ‘fixable’. Yet right on cue comes an untimely offside, an unexpected turnover, or a head-scratching coaching decision.
Right now the Philadelphia Eagles are a team that lacks discipline, direction, and a correlation of the differences between ‘want too’ and ‘know-how’. While each of these problems may not begin with the man in the visor, as the head coach all problems are delegated to you and you’re expected to have all of the answers.
The University of Minnesota’s head football coach, P.J. Fleck once had an infamous quote stating:
“Bad teams, no one leads. Averages teams, coaches lead. But elite teams, players lead.”
Over the last several seasons the Philadelphia Eagles have been a product of everything that is Doug Pederson. The question is; is that a good thing or a bad thing? On one hand, the Eagles are one of four teams that have reached the playoff in each of the last three seasons. On the other, sees the scars of the difficult paths taken to get to that point. As you can see, sitting at .500 by week 8 left the Eagles with work to do during the second half of the aforementioned reasons.
While this equation includes a journeyman turned Super Bowl MVP, the mysterious circumstances of a high profile franchise quarterback, a multitude of injuries, some practice squad guys, and a unique relationship (to say the least) with the general manager. You will see that these paths the Philadelphia Eagles have traveled over the year include one common denominator: Doug Pederson.
Since that aforementioned Super Bowl run in 2017 to say that they have been an average football team would be far from a stretch. In fact here is the Eagles record through the midway point over each of the last three seasons:
- 2018: 4-4
- 2019: 4-4
- 2020: 3-4-1
Bringing their overall record in these games to 11-12-1. Well, what do we have here? Just as we suspected, an average football team.
Of course, Philadelphia went on to right the ship to finish each of those seasons, but we all know and this team has proven time and time again. A football team is only as good as its head coach.
Just think about how many times you’ve seen a ‘great’ football team fall short of expectations due to situations at head coach.
“I think he’s doing a great job of demanding and allowing for players to have ownership of what we’re doing. It’s not necessarily what he’s making us do. We all feel like this is our thing. We have input. He listens to the players. We’re listening to him. And we’re building this together. We’re building the kind of atmosphere that we always talk about. But he actually allows that to grow. For a young coach in this league, that’s usually the thing that comes last is to have this much faith and trust in the players and the leadership. But I think it’s given us an opportunity to really build a culture.” – Malcolm Jenkins
Photo: Bruce Kluckhohn/Associated Press
The culture Pederson looked to build in Philadelphia fell nothing short of the statements Jenkins made following 2016. In fact, you can make the argument that they exceeded expectations. This is what makes Doug Pederson the commodity he is today because as seen over the last three years, Pederson is a player’s coach. He knows what buttons to press and when to press them, when the rest of the league decided to go padded practice Pederson did the opposite. Players just seem to rally around Pederson, at least history says so. However, as the season begins to approach its final hours, the schedule not getting any easier, and everyone including Pederson himself feeling the pressure mounting and the culture collapsing. Should we begin to worry that Pederson has run out of magic?
The last off-season it was reported that Eagles owner Jeffery Lurie has concerns with how Pederson’s offense has ‘grown stale’ dating back to the team’s Wild Card round performance against the Chicago Bears in 2019. Which is part of the reason that Carson Walch and Mike Groh are no longer hired by the organization. However with an entirely new coaching staff yet the same result being produced, you have to assume that at some point Lurie and Pederson sit down to have a conversation.
ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky, who is known as an avid Eagles supporter, recently made an appearance on NFL Network’s Daniel Jeremiah and Bucky Brooks podcast (Move The Sticks) and he made an interesting statement that could easily relate to the inconsistencies of Pederson through this season in particular.
“When these play-callers look at these young quarterbacks, I wish that so many of them would just go; and I think there are good examples with Greg Roman and Lamar Jackson last year. Greg saw Lamar was great at a couple of different things and they just did that a lot, and Lamar was just unstoppable. I think Brian Daboll is doing that with Josh Allen right now. You know the way that they get the ball out of his hands, it’s almost like the Golden State Warriors, where it’s layups and three-pointers, they don’t really believe in trying to shoot mid-range because that’s what Josh does best. And so I think that these coordinators that get this as a play-caller try to find the things that they are really good at and do it a ton and then the stuff that they’re not good at; and it sounds simple. They don’t really do it, they stay away from it. So if you’re a play-caller and you don’t know what your quarterback is good at or you do any you continue to try to force-feed it or call it because you’ve seen it work for another quarterback six years ago. That’s when you can really, really start to hurt a guy.”
Right now Pederson doesn’t seem to be on the same page as his general manager, franchise quarterback, coaching staff, or the media as of late. Which, while certainly concerning; should be no big deal when you’ve made the playoffs in three out of your four seasons and are a Super Bowl-winning head coach, right?
Possibly, but at some point, you have to begin to wonder just how long is Doug Pederson’s leash and how does history tell us this will play out?
Possibly somewhere in the middle other two coaches that Philadelphia has seen during Lurie’s tenure as the owner.
One one hand is Andy Reid, that man who spent 14 years as the leader of the men in midnight green, bringing some really good moments and equally bad moments during this time. On the other is Chip Kelly, the college genius that was proclaimed to be the next man to change the NFL as we knew it’s. Of course, despite Kelly winning 20 games over his first two seasons, he was fired following his third season because as we learned he lacked the ’emotional intelligence’ of a Pederson or a Reid; a character trait valued by Lurie.
As Pederson’s fifth season in Philadelphia draws to a close and evaluations come upon us, there are two things worth noting in regards to Pederson’s future in Philadelphia:
Just like Howie Roseman, Pederson signed an extension after the Super Bowl victory and is under contract in Philadelphia through the 2022 season.
While this makes sense given the fact that during an off-season press conference at the NFL Scouting Combine, Roseman went out of his way to acknowledge that while the Eagles aren’t necessarily rebuilding:
“We’re not in this one-year window … looking at this 2020, 2021, 2022, in this three-year period of getting guys for a part of it. I guess similar to how we looked at free agency in 2016 and 2017.”
Basically laying the groundwork to say ‘well this year we didn’t really expect much’ if/when the season went disarray. Oh yeah, and remember that extension we just mentioned? Well with two years remaining, it helps when you’re guaranteed to see the remaining $10million owed to you.
Lurie has shown he gives the opportunity to allow coaches the chance to turn it around. At the same time he’s also shown that if he feels a coach is leading his franchise in a dangerous direction, he would not hesitate to make the necessary changes. Has Pederson reached that point? Probably not but his antics as of late are certainly worrisome. With that being said, the Eagles organization is high on loyalty and a Super Bowl trophy holds weight (seven pounds to be exact), which makes it highly unlikely Pederson will be out of Philadelphia any time soon, at least not this season.
Featured Image: Bruce Kluckhohn/Associates Press
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