If you know anything about me, it is that I strongly believe that good coaching is the most important factor for any team in any sport. Which makes this title seem redundant. However, a major factor in being a good head coach is not only the ability to find players with talent, but to find coaches who can help improve your roster. It is about being adaptable. It is about being accountable.
Doug Pederson fell short in every category.
So, I will discuss how the Eagles managed to win a Super Bowl and how every year after that showed more and more that Doug Pederson was just lucky.
Hiring Frank Reich Was An Outlier
As mentioned, being able to identify good coaches is part of the job of being a Head Coach. Doug Pederson managed to see something in Frank Reich and made him the OC when Pederson was hired by the Eagles. Seeing the rest of his staff and the hires (or the lack there of) he made after Reich left for the Colts really showed that Pederson finding Reich was just a blind squirrel who found a nut. It just happened that nut was able to turn Carson Wentz into a MVP candidate and managed to get Nick Foles to play well enough for the team to win a shootout against the Patriots to win Super Bowl 52.
The Truth On Pederson Eventually Showed Itself
QB Play
Now we look at Pederson’s career after Reich has left. Starting with Wentz. For the first two season Wentz certainly wasn’t bad, but it was clear he wasn’t playing at the MVP level he was playing in 2017. That was the first red flag. This past season Wentz just took the biggest nose dive I have seen for a QB of his status. The year that Doug Pederson decided to call the offensive plays. Coincidence? Thinking Wentz was the problem, he switches to Jalen Hurts. And that worked for all of one game, because there was almost no film on him. But since Pederson doesn’t change or adapt for any reason, teams figured out how to stop Hurts rather quickly.
Player Development
Then you look at player development outside the QB position. There is none. A lot of what attributed to that Super Bowl was the fact that a lot of the key contributors for that team were already developed by the time they were with Pederson. Guys like LeGarrette Blount, Alshon Jeffery, Zach Ertz, Torrey Smith. When Pederson had to start relying on players who weren’t finished products in order to be successful is when you started seeing that Pederson might not be as good as advertised. Because they either played poorly or he just kept going to the aforementioned players despite them getting older and regressing.
The biggest example of the teams lack of player development is Nelson Agholor. He had been there two years prior to Pederson and hadn’t shown much, but he wasn’t really improving despite a spike in his production. Drops were still an issue. He still wasn’t making plays when they needed to be made. By the end of his 5th year it seemed like that he just wasn’t as good as people had advertised when he was drafted. Then he goes to Vegas and has a career year in yards, yards per catch, and touchdowns. He also coincidently fixed his dropping issues that so many fans were screaming about.
In addition to seeing Agholor succeed elsewhere you have the Eagles two recently drafted receivers, Jalen Reagor and JJ Arcega-Whiteside. Both were regard very highly at the time they were drafted and now seem like absolute amateurs. Arcega-Whiteside only having 14 total catches in two years. Reagor finished with less than 400 yards on the season and had no more than 55 yards in any game this season.
Pederson Cares More About Status Than Talent
A reason why these receivers and other young players can’t develop is because Pederson lets player status determine who plays and who doesn’t. As mentioned they have relied on Alshon Jeffery, who has regressed significantly since their Super Bowl run, instead of someone who is better and actually available. Travis Fulgham in his first five games with the Eagles caught 29 passes for 435 yards and four touchdowns. He was clearly the teams best wide receiver. Yet when Desean Jackson and Alshon Jeffery were deemed healthy enough to play, Fulgham took a backseat and the offense regressed as expected.
It is more than just the wide receivers. Jason Peters was very old and not very productive anymore. However, since he was a decorated veteran in the locker room he got the starting job over someone who was probably better than him. That’s really the theme here. The players who mattered in 2017 or who were guys like Desean Jackson got to play even if they weren’t the best player at their position.
Conclusion
It is really hard to get to me to believe that a Super Bowl winning head coach is not very good at his job. But it is true in some cases. Doug Pederson is one of those cases. He was just lucky enough to make one good coaching hire that propelled a team of already developed players (which he had no part in) to a Super Bowl win. Sometimes bad process ends with good results. However, the bad process that Doug Pederson practiced finally caught up to him and now he is out of a job.
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