Doug Pederson Is Lost

Doug Pederson wrapped up a long, meandering press conference and indeed today may be the day we turn on him.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a coach come across as less alpha, less prepared or more on the defensive than Pederson did today. He was calm and subdued and so were many of the questions. This wasn’t hostile, gotcha press conference. There were genuine questions about the team’s direction, regression of certain players, and coaching decisions. But Doug managed to come across as completely aloof. Sometimes when people open up, they are really insightful and inspire confience. When Doug does it, you want to pull up the sheets real close to your face in a fruitless attemp to shield yourself from what’s about to come, much the same way you do when you realize that Donald Trump is going to be our next president.

His message is this: I like the direction we’re headed even though we lost.

That’s fine. The 3-0 start adjusted our expectations to a point that was unreasonable. But since the start of training camp we knew this was going to be a rebuilding season. Which is exactly where we are now. The media and some fans get mired in every game and lose sight of the big picture. So I have no problem with the trust the process approach Doug seems to be taking. He’s in this for the long haul and that’s totally reasonable.

But, problem: They’re regressing. Last night was by far their worst game of the season. Unlike their other losses – to division opponents, a tough Lions team and the Seahawks – the Packers were very beatable, even with Aaron Rodgers finding himself again. The defense, which had been a strength, turned in another one of its seemingly random awful performances. The playcalling has been dumbed down to the point of laughability. Carson Wentz is worse than he was the first three weeks of the season. And Brandon Graham and Fletcher Cox have been neutralized. In fact, only DGB and maybe Caleb Sturgis have shown noticeable improvement. So when Doug says he likes the direction the Eagles are heading, it’s difficult to know what the F he’s talking about, because the Eagles are heading backwards, especially on defense, which is far from the work-in-progress that the offense is.

And then we got the typical Doug stuff.

From Eliot Shorr-Parks:

Eagles head coach Doug Pederson explained Tuesday his decision to bench receiver Nelson Agholor against the Green Bay Packers.

His answer was a head-scratcher.

When asked about Agholor not playing against the Packers, here is what Pederson had to say, in full:

“I just think he … the biggest thing is just, seeing the way the offense kind of works. Seeing how the game kind of unfolds. How guys react in certain situations. And I wanted him to put himself in the game situations and see how he would react, see how he would play, see how he would run that route. And its a lot easier to do that from a removed position where you can kind of see it from a big picture with calmer eyes where the pressure and stress isn’t on you to perform. That is what I am hoping he takes away from this, and learns from this down the road.”

This on a night where the Eagles wound up short a receiver. I hate Agholor as much as the next guy, but flat-out benching him proved to be the wrong decision.

And now he’s developing a press conference crutch, which is ironic because Jim Schwartz never played in the NFL and, as we learned last night, is apparently friends with Jim Gaffigan:

All this while he’s basically writing off the season with play out the string talk even though the Eagles are still, somewhat, in playoff contention:

The confidence he inspires right now is nearing 0. I’m not sure he knows what he’s doing.