That was the kind of game that gets a coach fired.
There’s no way to sugarcoat the Week 16 loss to Dallas. There’s no positive spin. There’s nothing to hold onto for future hope.
It was ugly. It was sloppy. It looked more like a team with 20 brand new players in Week 1 rather than a team with everything on the line in Week 16.
And it’s fair to put it at Doug Pederson’s feet.
We can end the charade now: The 2020 Eagles are a poor team, and part of that is because they haven’t been coached well enough. That’s on Pederson. Coaches have been fired for years like this. If you want Pederson out and a fresh perspective on the sidelines, you have every right to feel that way.
But going that far after one bad season would be a mistake, and it’s one team owner Jeff Lurie has made before.
We can pretend it’s OK because the Eagles won a Super Bowl out of nowhere in 2017, but Lurie’s decision to fire Andy Reid after the 2012 decision was a mistake. The Eagles had (and credit them for finding and hiring) one of the best coaches in NFL history. He changed the franchise. He was ahead of the curve with league trends like throwing the ball (yes, run-first offense isn’t the way to sustain offense in the modern NFL), and his players loved playing for him. He fell in 2011 and 2012, but assuming Reid couldn’t rebound in Philadelphia feels like something we say to ourselves to make the reality feel less harsh.
The Eagles have not come close to being as consistently good without Reid as they were with Reid.
Now, let’s be clear: Pederson isn’t Reid. Even though the teacher and protege each have one Super Bowl victory, Pederson isn’t an elite head coach. But I am still a fan, and believe he’s a good one having a bad year.
But here’s what Pederson represents, and why Lurie’s decision to go away from familiarity in 2012 to pursue a red-hot coaching name should not be forgotten now: Stability and the kind of coach a program is built around. One bad year doesn’t make a good coach suddenly bad. Instead of allowing Reid the chance to reinvent himself in Philadelphia and work with a rookie quarterback (some guy named Nick Foles) coming off showing promise down the stretch in 2012, the Eagles opted to make a big change and go after Chip Kelly.
Eight years later, here we are again.
Pederson is having a year that gets coaches fired. There’s a promising rookie quarterback named Jalen Hurts that Pederson has already gotten more out of than his draft status would have assumed. The Eagles could opt to go after the biggest names (Eric Bieniemy, Brian Dabol, Lincoln Riley) on the coaching market and say goodbye to Pederson.
Sometimes change on the sideline is the path back to winning. Sometimes we assume it is when stability makes more sense. Pederson will never be confused with Bill Belichick, but he’s a Super Bowl winner, has a locker room of players that play hard for him and should be afforded the chance to get back up from a tough year.
Heading into 2020, only four coaches had taken their teams to the postseason in three consecutive seasons: Reid, Pederson, Belichick and Sean Payton. The Saints went 7-9 in four of five years following Payton’s Super Bowl victory. That included a year in which the coach was suspended due to a bounty gate. Despite poor play and embarrassment, the Saints opted for stability. It has worked.
The grass is not always greener on the other side, especially when it comes to coaching in the NFL. Sure, the Eagles could hit the lottery again like they did with Reid in 1999. Or they could find another Pederson. But there's also a good chance that another Kelly (in terms of performance, not personality) arrives and years are wasted.
Lurie made a mistake by moving on from Reid, and that should be part of his calculus now as Pederson’s hot seat gets very warm.