Ditching Doug Pederson Now Would Be A Colossal Mistake
If there’s one consolation about the Eagles not being in the playoffs right now it’s that their miserable 2020 season is finally over and the national media can stop talking about them.
Unfortunately the Birds were so dysfunctional at the end of the regular season that their “4th quarter tank” in the final game of the regular season took over all the NFL headlines for the following week. It even compelling ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky to post a NOTES APP tweet.
At least those headlines have finally faded with Super Wild Card Weekend and Deshaun Watson’s potential trade request from Houston. But now another big story is coming out of Philadelphia with new that head coach Doug Pederson’s job may not be safe after all.
Doug Pederson’s status as @Eagles coach is not firm, sources tell @Tim_McManus and me.
Pederson could be out if owner Jeffrey Lurie is not confident about Pederson’s vision going forward after the two meet again soon.
Lurie’s concerns extend well beyond Carson Wentz, per sources.— Chris Mortensen (@mortreport) January 10, 2021
When Pederson put Nate Sudfeld in the 4th quarter against Washington it was done with the assumption that Jeffrey Lurie assured him that he was coming back next season. But if it turns out that Lurie has changed his mind and wants to move on from Pederson then it’s yet another dumpster-fire storyline for the Eagles. Not only could Doug get fired, but they could also trade him to former Eagles assistant Joe Douglas’s new team.
That talk about a coach being traded is whispers about Doug Pederson to the #NYJets
— John McMullen (@JFMcMullen) January 10, 2021
Pederson may have had a bad year as a coach, but his bad season was also hampered by a bad offseason from Howie Roseman and an unpredictably bad season from quarterback Carson Wentz. And if Pederson really lost the locker room by tanking a single quarter in a meaningless game then quite frankly it says more about players on the roster than it does about Pederson.
Pederson and Roseman both deserve eternal gratitude in Philadelphia for delivering the first Super Bowl in franchise history and ending their 57 year title drought. But as we all know in this league you’re only as good as your most recent work and both of them were at their worst this season. While Howie Roseman has sadly proven that 2017 was an extraordinary anomaly from an otherwise mediocre executive career, Pederson’s 2020 was an anomaly from an otherwise very good head coaching run. Both deserve one last chance to show they can turn things around whether it’s Jalen Hurts, Carson Wentz, Nick Foles or Deshaun Watson under center in 2021.
The Eagles roster needs plenty of overhaul over the next couple of years and most players from the 2017 Super Bowl team will not be apart of that future. Pederson however deserves a chance to see if he can coach this new incarnation of Eagles football and lead them to the same success as before.
This news story of the Pederson Era coming to an abrupt end most of all says a lot about Jeffrey Lurie. In the past Lurie was criticized for being too patient with head coach Andy Reid, but history shows he may have made a mistake firing him after back-to-back non-playoff seasons. The Chip Kelly experience started out well before quickly falling apart, and Philadelphia realized that Chip was not capable of turning around the team after constructing a Frankenstein’s Monster of the 2015 team. Firing Chip is arguably the finest move of Lurie’s career along with rehiring a humbled Howie Roseman and hiring an unknown commodity at head coach in Pederson. But in this situation Lurie forcing his hand into making a quick change at head coach would be a colossal mistake.
2020 has been full of nothing but PR nightmares for the Eagles and firing their first Super Bowl winning head coach only 3 years removed from that victory would top all of those PR nightmares. Not even giving Pederson a chance to redeem this football team as he did for so long with Andy Reid could push this team further down the toilet.
And I would like to wait a few more years before SB Nation puts out their Collapse video on the 2017 Eagles.