Much has been made of the Eagles’ strategy employed during yesterday’s fourth quarter meltdown in which they were outscored 21-0 by the Panthers on their way to a maddening, embarrassing, and entirely avoidable defeat. Second-guessing is to be expected, particularly after a game in which the Eagles only ran the football once over the final 16-plus minutes, and Jim Schwartz again went ultra-conservative as Cam Newton, who threw for all of 24 first half yards, obliterated the Eagles’ defense to the tune of 201 yards and two touchdown passes in the final quarter.

Doug Pederson, though, wasn’t in the mood for questions at his day-after press conference. After keeping things even keel while expressing confidence in his team and pointing out that they’re only a couple of plays away from a better record, he turned irritable when asked about offensive and defensive play-calling.

The exchange:

Reporter: “Why is it crazy to ask if you should run the ball more or if the defense should blitz more?”

Pederson: “Now you’re getting into game plan stuff and you’re getting into scheme. And you guys aren’t in there watching the tape like we are for 18 hours a day and putting game plans together. It’s easy to sit in the press box and say, ‘They should run the ball.” Come down and stand on the sideline with me and make decisions. You know, I should run it here, I should pass it here, let’s throw a screen here, let’s get the quarterback out of the pocket right here. Oh, no, there’s 15 seconds left on the clock. Until you’re down there with me on the sideline making in-game decisions, I guess you can ask all you want.”

Saucy.

It also led to this perfect Periscope moment:

A true disciple of The Cuz, for sure.

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Doug Pederson went on 94 WIP this morning for his weekly postgame conversation with Angelo Cataldi.

It was a good discussion. I’ve said a million times before that Angelo is a great interviewer when he turns off the radio shtick.

Three quotes I want to highlight, two that explain Doug’s weird Sunday ramblings about “pressure.”

Here’s the verbatim:

Cataldi: Doug, you said after the game that the pressure was off your team now. Could you explain that to us?

Pederson: Yeah, kind of what I meant by that is, going into the season, obviously Super Bowl champs, there’s going to pressure every week. Games are big. Every week is big. And pressure to win is always there. I think now, more than anything, you look at where we are, and the pressure of being the #1 seed, the #2 seed is probably gone in the NFC. But the fact is that we still control our own destiny. I don’t want the guys to feel any more added pressure to try to make plays. Just make the ones that come to them, don’t go looking for them. From that standpoint, that’s sort of what I meant by that comment, is that let’s focus on our division. Let’s focus on winning our division. You do that and you’re in the postseason and that’s what we need to do.

Angelo asked a follow-up:

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I’ll be honest with you; I really didn’t feel like writing about this game. Then I barfed out 2,600 words anyway.

The original lede was great. It was something about how Carson Wentz was phenomenal, the defense was suffocating, and Doug Pederson looked like the aggressive play caller we saw last season.

That was the story for three quarters on Sunday afternoon, then the Eagles suffered a 12-minute brain fart as they surrendered a 17-point fourth quarter lead and lost at home like choking dogs. In turn, postgame Twitter was a spectacular meltdown of outrageous takes and nonstop arguing over whether or not Jimmy Kempski drew a racist stick figure.

It was that kind of day.

I’m really struggling to remember a worse loss over the last ten years. Tennessee was bad, for sure, and that held the title of “worst loss of the Pederson era” for a whopping three weeks. This one takes the cake, easily. It felt like a 2016 game, did it not? They struggled to finish that year, and this loss was reminiscent of the overtime Dallas defeat when the Birds blew a 10-point fourth quarter lead. It even brought back vile memories of Andy Reid-coached NFC Championship Game losses.

Right, so let’s just get into it and try to make this as painless as possible.

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