Pederson’s Job Isn’t Safe, But It’s Not All on Him
The demise of the Philadelphia Eagles during this wild-n-wacky 2020 season has been nothing short of cataclysmic.
Ending the season with 4 or 5 wins (and let’s be honest, it’ll be 4), including going 2-3 and being the first team eliminated in the worst division in the history of the NFL, being decimated by injuries, and embroiling themselves in a quarterback controversy completely of their own doing, this is a year where nothing has gone right for the Birds.
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But this is the National Football League, where players are upheld and accountability often falls on the Head Coaches, and Doug Pederson is not innocent of the Eagles’ plight by any means. Pederson has yet again proven how much of the Super Bowl victory in 2017 was due to Frank Reich’s offense, turning in yet another season of the same stale playbook based around plays his aging and fragile playmakers simply haven’t been able to execute.
Reports have gotten louder and louder about lackadaisical practice habits which have translated directly to games (the Eagles lead the league in pre-snap penalties by a lot) and he has shown an incredible inability to make adjustments in-game when his game planning inevitably stinks on ice. He has completely forgotten whatever juju that worked with Carson Wentz and the skeleton-offense last December, despite having a lot of his playmakers back healthy during the latter part of this season. He also refuses to give up all playcalling duties or hire a real Offensive Coordinator despite the pathetic offenses that are jogged out weekly. And now that the Jalen Hurts hype was tempered a bit (by the worst defense in football) is as clear as ever that quarterback, while a huge and problematic issue that will define the Eagles 2021 offseason, is not the only nor the biggest problem with this football team.
For all of the issues that plague the Eagles, Doug Pederson is not and never has been the sole source of it, at every level of this team there is tons of blame to go around.
Quarterback Carson Wentz, at one time Philly’s Ginger Jesus, was downright terrible all season and was eventually benched, having regressed in every capacity from stats to mechanics to the all-important eye-test. Jalen Hurts in his relief played fine, but amassed a 1-2 record and looked like a pretty mediocre rookie against the worst defense in football last week. Dallas Goedert and Miles Sanders highlight an ever-shrinking group of young offensive playmakers, but past them, it’s straight-up (although not promising) question marks elsewhere, like rookies John Hightower and Quez Watkins and the enigma that is Travis Fulgham (Long May He Reign), or straight-up duds like JJ “Well he wasn’t injured before the combine, not like that DK dude” Arcega-Whiteside, (Howie should be fired into the sun for that alone, but I’ll get to that another time). And even with our playmakers, Doug can’t figure out how to use them, relying instead on the corpse of Alshon Jeffery for significant playing time (yes, I’m as shocked as you are). Dallas Goedert didn’t receive a single reception until late in the second quarter against Dallas, Fulgham, at one time Wentz’ favorite target and budding star, has completely vanished from the playbook, and Sanders has never eclipsed 20 carries in a game despite leading the league in YPC.
The defense too is rotten, and frankly, Jim Schwartz hasn’t gotten the praise he deserves for making this defense halfway useful for most of the year despite his own share of problems. And yet, they have shown how thinly they are held together by a select few playmakers. Nowhere was that more apparent than when they lost Darius Slay against the Arizona Cardinals and Fletcher Cox against the Dallas Cowboys, leading to career days for Kylar Murray and Andy friggin Dalton. They have little-to-no true depth at any level either, relying on 30-year-old Cox, 32-year-old Brandon Graham, and nearly-30-year-old Darius Slay to hold things together, with really only LB Alex Singleton and DE Derek Barnett showing any sort of long-term promise. Special Teams have regressed as well, with Jake Elliot making a fool of himself almost every week and the coverage teams giving up consistently great field position for opponents, not to mention the terrible return teams (Fun fact: Boston Scott has THREE kickoff returns of more than 25 yards this year).
And what’s more? The Eagles find themselves in arguably the worst roster predicament in football, made worse by the reduced salary cap due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As mentioned previously the Eagles are more than 40 million dollars over the cap, and 10 of the Eagles’ 14 largest contracts are for players 30 or older, many of whom can’t or won’t be reworked to make some breathing room. Their now-backup quarterback (though hopefully not next year) has a 33 million dollar hit against the cap and combined with his play that makes him virtually untradeable, for the Eagles or anyone who may want him.
The Eagles have 14 players about to become UFAs:
- T Jason Peters (Injured all year, set to retire)
- S/CB Jalen Mills (Moved to safety, has been okay there)
- QB Nate Sudfeld (Longtime backup QB, never dressed for a game)
- CB Nickel Robey-Coleman (slot corner, played mediocre-to-terrible all year)
- DE Vinny Curry (Old, injury-prone)
- DT Hassan Ridgeway (Young, decent player, but ended with another season-ending injury)
- CB Cre’von LeBlanc (Promising, but injury-prone)
- TE Richard Rodgers (Reliable, but old)
- DT T. Y. McGill (Just a Guy™)
- LB Duke Riley (Just a Guy™)
- RB Corey Clement (remember when he had the most receiving yards in the Super Bowl?)
- TE Josh Perkins (Just a Guy™)
- LB Nate Gerry (On the Rocket to the Sun with Howie)
- S Rudy Ford (Special Teams ace but that’s exceedingly it)
And there is a significant argument for not bringing a SINGLE one of them back, with the exception of MAYBE Jalen Mills and Hassan Ridgeway.
Think about that, that’s OVER A QUARTER of the roster, many of whom were starters or heavily-rotated players, for whom there is little to no reason to bring back, they were THAT ineffective in 2020. So the Eagles have one of the worst cap situations in football, an aging and expensive roster who also happen to be the only thing holding things together, and nearly a quarter of the roster hardly worth bringing back to the team in the first place.
In a season as disastrous as this one has been for Philadelphia it is hard to imagine nobody comes out unscathed, from players to the front office to the Head Coach. The last time The Eagles lost this many games, Andy Ried was kicked to the curb in favor of Chip Kelly. Yet even that team or the disaster that was left after Kelly left the program in ruins didn’t have as bleak an outlook as this team does. Jeff Lurie will always have the final say, and despite standing by his coach and General Manager I nor anybody can really know if Doug Pederson’s job is safe.
Regardless of Doug’s fate in the next few weeks, the issues with this team run far deeper than the head coach, and Doug should be far from the only one on the chopping block.
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