What if the Philadelphia Eagles were actually correct in firing Doug Pederson?
By David Esser
The offensive play-calling.
“Play-calling” is a tough thing to assess, as there’s a ton of factors that go into what makes a successful offense tick. For example, you can’t necessarily blame a loss on a coach and his “bad play-calling” if the team’s #1 wide receiver keeps dropping passes, or if the center is struggling to snap the football.
However, when it comes to Doug Pederson and the Philadelphia Eagles post 2017, the sample size is large enough to where we can accurately assess his ability to develop unique and productive play designs.
In 2018 the Eagles ranked 14th in total yards per game, and 18th in points per game. In 2019 they ranked 14th in total yards per game again, and 12th in points per game. Lastly in 2020 the Eagles ranked 24th in total yards per game, and 26th in points per game.
Not exactly elite numbers.
Specifically this past season, Pederson routinely shied away from using the ground game, despite its overall effectiveness and the lack of production he was getting out of his quarterbacks. That’s a negative aspect that you can pretty directly associate with play-calling.
There’s a lot of context that goes into the Eagles’ offensive struggles the last three seasons (injuries being a big one), but ultimately speaking, the offense has either been average, or below average since the Super Bowl (48 regular season games). That’s too big of a sample size to ignore when evaluating the effectiveness of an offensive minded coach, even if said coach has a shiny SB trophy sitting on his desk.