This is where we sharpen our nasty words and phrases and point them directly at Douglas Pederson, who met with the assembled media today and made a fool of himself, doubling down on his moronic decisions last night. Credit to the media, which absolutely grilled him in a way that could get you banned from covering a Flyers game.
Let’s break this down question by question, because I find that punching yourself in the head in short, steady bursts is more cathartic following an unnecessary loss to a division rival. Also, because Jim handled the transcribe (with paraphrased questions) and I have to do little more than copy and paste and snark, which is how I do:
Q: Anything you’ve second guessed?
OH GOOD! This is the part where, upon watching game film and breaking out his counting beans, Crusher Doug realizes the error of his ways and explains that he, like his predecessor, has to do a better job. Surely he realized his end-of-game management cost the Eagles a win.
“I’m the first one to tell you and I’ll admit that I look at the tape not necessarily from execution the first time around. I’ll do that today. I look at it from the standpoint of “Did I put the guys in the right spots? Did I do enough to be accountable for putting our offense in the right spots by play call?” I’m always evaluating myself, the players, the whole thing. You know, if there’s anything in this game that I look at and I point a finger at for myself, would probably be the play in the first quarter on the fourth down. We kicked the field goal, got the roughing, and it would have put us at a 4th and 1. And, you know, it would have been a situation there possibly at the 7 yard line to go for it. And whether you make the 4th and 1 or not, you keep the drive alive or they get the ball at the 7 yard line and have to go the distance. I look at those plays and I need to evaluate those from my own standpoint.”
WHAT?!?! That’s the takeaway– declining a fourth and 1 early in the game? I think most people forgot about that one what with the fact that it got buried ‘neath a pile of ineptitude. But thanks for reminding me. Add it to the list!
“The 3rd and 8 play. I looked at that again this morning, looked at it on the plane last night. I’d have called the same thing again. It’s assignment football. It’s one of our basic, fundamental plays that we’ve repped our entire season in a man situation, which we got. And it just comes down to assignments and we busted one assignment and you know, negative play happened. So we have to look at it. We have to own up to those. It starts with me obviously, and then each man on the team has to own up to their responsibility and make sure that those plays don’t happen again.”
YOU ARE MISSING THE POINT, DOUGATHA CHRISTIE. It has nothing to do with the actual play – it is a fine play! – but rather with the situation in which it was called, bae. Under no circumstances is it worth the risk of throwing the ball backwards when a simple no gain will be good enough to kick the field goal. Tim McManus picked on that thread and moved Doug’s feet toward the fire as the assorted Bermans and Bowens prepared the grilling surface:
Q: What about the fact that by nature of the play it’s going in reverse and if it gets dropped for a loss that pulls you out of field goal range?
“Any play has the ability to go backwards. Whether it’s a run, a pass, a sack. I know where we were on the field. It is a relatively safe football play. It gets Darren Sproles out in space in a man coverage look that we have the ability to run some interference on some linebackers, i.e. Sean Lee who made the play.”
Yes, any play has the ability to go backwards, but plays that start out going backwards have, how should I put this, A MUCH GREATER ABILITY! It’s like eating cheesecake and washing it down with a tequila flight– any food has the ability to give me the shits, but let’s not serve up any equity to our bowels and put them in a position to take us down. Order the chicken, Heavy D! Play it safe, like you’ve done for the previous three and a half quarters.
“We make that play, we’re inside the 20 yard line when you look at it on film, we’re inside the 20 yard line with a first and ten, or at worst it’s a 4th down and you’re kicking a field goal from a lot closer in than what happened.”
Excuse me for a second:
No, Doug, that is incorrect. Here’s why. At worst is a four-yard loss on the play forcing you into the equally dumb decision to punt the ball away when you’re still in field goal distance. Do you know how I know that? Because it’s what happened.
Q: Did you second guess yourself on the decision not to kick the field goal?
“No I did not.”
Vomit.
“That was another one where I felt too where we were in the game, defense was beginning to catch their legs and they had some momentum and we had stopped them and we were stopping their run game. Outside of the first quarter, [Zeke] had like 12 rushes in the second and 14 yards in the third so we were doing a great job on the running game. I was trusting my defense in that situation, and to pin them back inside the 15 at the ten, to make them drive the length of the field, I felt real comfortable with that decision.”
I believe that the correct decision, based on trusting your defense, would be to take a shot at the field goal and, because you trust them, know that missing wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.
Q: If you trust your defense why don’t you kick the FG and if you miss you trust your defense to stop them?
“Then they’re on the 38 yard line.”
Q: Isn’t the reward two scores with six minutes to go…
“It is. But I also look at the 3rd and 8 and if we just execute a little bit better than you’re not in this situation and we’re not talking about it today.”
That’s not how this works. It’s a risk-reward scenario. The risk to run that play was greater than the risk to kick the field goal. This isn’t an if-then equation. It’s not fucking Papa Sloth’s algebra class. If you want to take a shot at the first down on third down, by all means, do so, but do so in a way that doesn’t create a disproportionately high risk for a loss. Take the upside, leave the risk.
Q: Do you feel you should have been more aggressive with timeouts [at the end of the 4th]?
“Yeah, I went back again today and looked at that and I felt doing the math on everything and you burn two timeouts there you might get the ball back with about 15 seconds, one timeout and have to go 30-35 yards to kick the FG. Possibly, in that situation. But again I was relying on the fact that our defense was playing extremely well at the time, we were starting to put pressure on Dak those last couple of possessions that they had and I was fully confident in our team going into overtime that we were gonna win the game.”
If your defense was playing… well… and you had confidence in… them… then calling a timeout and relying on them to get one more stop – ON THIRD AND 28! – would’ve been the correct call. Worst case, you go to overtime. Best case, you can run two plays and take a shot at winning the game on a last second field goal. There is, like, no downside here. The chances that the Cowboys convert and then go on to score is much smaller than the risk that they get the ball first in overtime and… win. Which they did. You did literally everything wrong. Every. Single. Thing. And the only takeaway, the only learning moment that came from this was that you would’ve gone for it on fourth and 1 in the first quarter? That is some messed up shit. There are bad judgement calls, and then there are incorrect decisions. These are incorrect decisions. And they are going to be a big problem.
