Doug Pederson, who is "Pissed Off" at Himself, Talks About Running the Football More
We rag Angelo Cataldi on this site for stirring up fake outrage, but today it should be 100% warranted and genuine. The Eagles served up the poo poo platter of football performances on Sunday afternoon and turned in one of the most pitiful post-bye displays you will ever see, losing to the 2-7 Giants by double digits.
Doug went on 94 WIP for his weekly day-after press conference and said this:
“I’m pissed off. I’m pissed off at myself. I’m pissed off at the way we played. It frustrates me, it frustrates me to no end. We have too much pride, I have too much pride. These players have too much pride. We work our ass off during the week. It’s frustrating. It is frustrating. Blame it on me all you want. I’ll handle it with the players, you can blame it on me. I’m a big guy, I can handle it, it’s fine. We’re self inflicting ourselves. We are killing ourselves. We are shooting ourselves in the foot. All of those cliche little statements is still showing up and it’s frustrating.”
He actually offered that up before Angelo even asked him a question, which is interesting. He wanted to get out in front and take accountability right off the bat, so that’s admirable. Just come right out and put it on your shoulders and take the blame. That generally plays well with a Philadelphia sports audience.
This response to another question I thought was a little wonky:
Angelo: Right now you have the third fewest runs in the NFL but you’ve been running it effectively. Are you running it enough?
Pederson: I think we were 50/50 run/pass yesterday, pretty much. We had a good game running the football. Listen, you’re down 14-3, and we have a long run to start the third quarter and get us right back in the football game. The first couple of drives of the second half we were back in the football game. We failed to execute down the stretch. So yeah, okay, maybe we do run more. That’s fine. If that’s what it takes. We’ll do whatever it takes to win.
Uh, the box score shows 37 passes, 23 runs, and three sacks, so it was not “pretty much” a 50/50 running and passing game.
Now, if Doug is talking about what he called from the sidelines before Carson Wentz audibled into something else, then that’s a totally different story. And I think he can specify that in this answer without necessarily throwing his quarterback under the bus. It doesn’t result in criticism of Wentz necessarily, and whether he’s making the correct pre-snap reads, it just shifts the conversation appropriately.
Regardless, this ended up being a very typical 60/40 type of Doug (or Andy Reid) game, and they had to throw a bit more to get themselves out of an early hole and also while chasing the game at the end. That’s fine, and the nature of the game dictates pass/run ratio, but they ultimately finished with more yards per rush than pass, so think about that for a moment. The efficiency wasn’t there, so the head coach and QB probably both have to carry some of the fault considering they went 0-9 on third down and scored 17 points.
Here’s the full audio: