Pederson proving to be a better coach
Birds are better, so Pederson proving to be a better coach
PHILADELPHIA » Doug Pederson says he tells his players that if they can’t have fun playing football, they should probably find something else to do.
He hasn’t had to mention it lately, though.
The Eagles are rocking an eight-game win streak and a 9-1 record after a Sunday night blowout of the Dallas Cowboys. They’re winning so convincingly each game seems to end with a boring victory formation.
“The guys are having fun playing together, and that’s what you’re seeing,” Pederson said Monday. “It’s definitely a team effort right now.”
Contrast that with last year, when Pederson was so discombobulated by an overtime road loss to the Cowboys it basically blew up the Eagles’ season. That nasty setback featuring enough questionable decisions that you wondered what made the Eagles think they could win with Pederson as their head coach.
When Pederson isn’t giving his players the fun speech, he lectures them about how critical it is to have a short memory. Someone has to tell them to focus their energy on what they can control.
But Pederson himself couldn’t let go of that loss last year to the Cowboys. It haunted him because the decisions he personally second-guessed boiled over into the next game, a five-point loss to the Giants, and ignited a stretch where the Eagles lost seven of eight games.
We know it bothered Pederson because he publicly admitted last week that he questioned some of the calls he made and the way he coached his guys.
Pederson indicated the mistake that really bothered him was the screen pass he called to Darren Sproles that went for a sixyard loss and knocked the Eagles out of field goal range, late in the game. A trey would have given the Eagles a 10-point cushion against a Cowboys squad that was struggling to get first downs.
Pederson still could have sent then-kicker Caleb Sturgis out for a 50-yard-plus field goal, but feared what a miss would do to field position.
Coach Doug played it safe and punted. And obviously not safe enough because the Cowboys marched 90 yards for the equalizer, got the ball first in overtime and rumbled in for the winner.
Hindsight is 20-20 and Pederson had help making those faulty decisions. But he was the guy who took the heat, who stood at the podium and tried to justify the unjustifiable, including kicking a field goal instead of taking a penalty that would have put the Eagles in fourthand-short at the sevenyard line of the Cowboys early in the game.
Stung by the defeat and the subsequent criticism, Pederson vowed to be aggressive the rest of the season, but to be smart with it. He wasn’t.
Instead of using common sense the following game against the New York Giants, he was overwhelmed by his own bravado and turned into Captain Fourth Down. There were at least two instances when he should have taken the easy field goal but instead gambled on fourth down because he said he didn’t want to go back on the message he gave his players, which was he didn’t want to lose being conservative. So he lost being over-aggressive.
That was then. This year fourth down hasn’t been an issue. When it’s fourth-and-short or thirdand-short, for that matter, Carson Wentz typically squeezes through the line for the first down. The Eagles are second in the league in fourth down success as they’re converting at a 72.7 percent rate.
When Pederson calls plays on third down, they frequently work. The Eagles’ 45.7 percent conversion rate ranks second in the NFL.
This Eagles team is better than last year’s model. The talent was upgraded at wide receiver with Torrey Smith and Alshon Jeffery. The coaching staff has developed a dynamic four-headed attack with Jay Ajayi, LeGarrette Blount, Corey Clement and Kenjon Barner.
The Eagles have made only a fraction of the mistakes that doomed them last year. Wentz has thrown for 25 touchdown passes and just five interceptions compared to 11 and seven over his first 10 games last year.
The head coach is better, too, although you can’t really point to a game and say this win was on him.
On Sunday night Pederson declined the opportunity to panic when kicker Jake Elliott was lost in the first half with a concussion. That basically meant no field goals the rest of the way in a game where the Eagles trailed, 9-7, at the intermission.
In essence, it was one less decision to make for Pederson, who was in four-down territory once the Eagles got into Cowboys territory.
That had to make Pederson smile. Last year he had a healthy kicker but couldn’t, or wouldn’t put him in position to kick a long field goal that could have all but iced the game. This year Pederson doesn’t have a kicker in the second half and the Eagles play old school, grind it out football and win convincingly using the run game. The Eagles also converted three of four two-point conversion attempts as they outscored the Cowboys, 30-0, in the second half.
Yeah, that was a crippled Cowboys team the Eagles bashed.
But this is now, not last year when the Cowboys were on a roll and the Eagles were in flames. Pederson is grateful it’s come full circle.
“It’s a lot of fun,” he said. “The guys enjoy coming to work every single day that they’re here, and part of my messaging to the team is if you can’t have fun doing what you’re doing, you should probably find something else to do.”