What if the Philadelphia Eagles were actually correct in firing Doug Pederson?

Poor results…?

The Philadelphia Eagles won a Super Bowl in 2017, that is true. Most teams in the NFL would trade their last four seasons for Philly’s on that alone. However, the idea that Doug Pederson’s Eagles have had an abundance of success since then isn’t particularly true.

If we’re all being completely honest here, Philly made the playoffs in 2018 and 2019 by default. They lucked into a Wild Card appearance in 2018 due to Minnesota choking a Week 17 win away against the Bears backups, and only won in the first-round due to Cody Parkey being bad at his job. The notion that Philadelphia was “one Alshon drop away” from a Super Bowl win that year is pretty out there.

In 2019, the Eagles won their division and got to host a playoff game, which is a pretty big achievement in itself. However, this comes with the disclaimer that they won it at 9-7, in a division that would ultimately produce zero winning teams the following season.

If the NFC East wasn’t the worst division in football, there’s a genuine chance that the Eagles would’ve finished with losing records in 2018 and 2019. That’s all hypothetical sure, but Pederon’s “elite” resume becomes a little less elite when you take into account the context behind the 2018 and 2019 seasons.

Obviously that’s a reflection on the Eagles’ front office as well for building bad rosters, but that’s a discussion for another day.

Ultimately speaking, I don’t know if the decision to fire Doug was a good one for Philly, but I do know it’s not clear one way or the other. It’s not fair to pin Pederson with all of the blame for the team’s struggles in 2020, but I also think it’s silly to absolve him of every ounce of blame and accountability. There’s definitely some level of honest justification to the organization’s desire to want a new head coach.

Regardless of how this offseason plays out, only time will tell if firing Pederson was the right move.