Pederson says he’ll keep chatting with the boss
PHILADELPHIA » Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie opened up a can of worms Thursday when he said he speaks regularly with head coach Doug Pederson about game strategies.
Though Lurie denied he got involved in the coaching staff’s Xs and Os, brushing it off as a waste of the staff’s time, he readily conceded he questioned Pederson about the plan, and made suggestions, as well.
“He’ll go over his gameplanning for a future game,” Lurie said. “I might have some questions. It’s not anything out of the ordinary. It’s just being all part of a collaborative effort. Good situation.”
This isn’t a great time for the billionaire boss to imply his fingerprints are on the game plan in any form.
Pederson recently weathered a storm of criticism from ex-NFL general manager Mike Lombardi, who called him the least qualified head coach he’s seen in his 30 years in the NFL. (Pederson privately doesn’t think much of Lombardi’s qualifications, either.)
It also wasn’t the right time for Pederson to confirm the unsolicited help that comes in conversations with Lurie ranging from 15 minutes to two hours, depending on “the information we’re talking about.
“We did it all last season,” Pederson said of the weekly chats. “We’ll continue it again this year. Those are obviously some private conversations. I’m not going to dive into them. I think our owner is so passionate about this team and this organization that part of my job is just keeping him informed on what we’re doing. He may not be around every day of the week but this is our chance to kind of recap the game from Sunday and then going forward, sort of the scouting report, if you will, on the upcoming opponent.”
Meddlesome as that sounds, Pederson’s understanding is that Lurie initiated the same such sessions with Andy Reid, who was fired as head coach of the Eagles after the 2012 season.
Chip Kelly also spoke with Lurie, and wound up getting canned with a week to go in the 2015 campaign. Lurie thought nothing of giving Eagles players pre-game pep talks, his fiery command to “play like your hair is on fire” helping spark the team to a road upset of the New England Patriots. The next week Lurie handed out T-shirts reading “53 Angry Men.”
While Kelly didn’t reveal the extent of the conversations, Lurie had no issue describing chats with Pederson.
“You just go over what are some of the strengths and weaknesses of the opponent, that’s about it,” Lurie said. “You’re not going over detailed game plans. That would be a waste of their time with me. It’s more like, ‘I think we can attack this player. This is a mismatch I want to go after. This defensive coordinator is new at that team.’ We look at film from X, Y and Z, try to evaluate him, see how it applies to the personnel they have, for example like this week on the Redskins. It’s really kind of good stuff but it’s not meant to take up a lot of time.”
The Redskins, who the Eagles oppose Sunday at FedEx Field, have a new defensive coordinator in Greg Manusky, and he likes to blitz.
The Eagles did almost nothing to protect quarterback Carson Wentz last season as he was sacked nine times, the line playing without the suspended Lane Johnson.
No one needs to tell Pederson that the Eagles scored just one offensive touchdown in the two losses to the Redskins last year, couldn’t stop the run or make plays down the homestretch and basically didn’t give themselves a chance to win on the road. After beating the Chicago Bears in their first road game, the Birds lost their last seven away from Lincoln Financial Field.
If Pederson has any doubt about why the Eagles were unable to win on the road last year he should sit down with veteran safety Malcolm Jenkins.
“If you go back and look at last year, in most of our losses they were all close,” Jenkins said. “Two of the games, I think we fumbled late in the fourth quarter with a lead. One was in overtime. So we had opportunities to win on the road. It’s just those plays, those one or two mistakes here or there you can’t make on the road because it’s hard to win on the road. I think those are lessons that we learned the hard way and hopefully this year we’ll bounce back from.
“Really it’s not like we got beat up by teams. Or we got outplayed, literally. It’s just being able to, at the end of a game, do all the small things right. Hold onto the ball. Make good decisions. And finish games out when we’re playing situational football.
Anything less and Pederson will find himself in Lurie’s office getting suggestions about how to upset Reid and the Kansas City Chiefs the following week at Arrowhead Stadium.
“Every game is big,” Pederson said. “We do treat it one week at a time, obviously. This is no different. It just happens to be our opener on the road. We know we didn’t play well last year on the road. And it is a division opponent. So it’s a great test for our ball club. Find out where we’re at.”