Philadelphia Eagles: Of course Doug Pederson deserves another HC job

While making an appearance at the charity golf tournament, ex-Philadelphia Eagles head coach was asked by the assembled media whether he would like to return to head coaching, to which he gave the following response (as per PFT’s Mike Florio).

"“The competitor inside wants to continue to compete,” Pederson said. “Hopefully, I get an opportunity to lead another football team and do the same things again and learn from the last five years. What a great teaching moment for me. I always talk about how we learn from failures and different things like that. I don’t want to say that this was a failure, but at the same time, I want to learn from the last five years moving forward in my next opportunity.”"

My instant analysis in one word? Duh.

Want a little more meat on the bone? Well, read on.

Doug Pederson deserves a post-Philadelphia Eagles head coach opportunity.

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Doug Pederson coached the Philadelphia Eagles for 86 games from 2016-20, 80 in the regular season and six in the playoffs.

Over that rollercoaster of a five season stretch, Pederson recorded a 46-39 record, won the division twice, and… oh yeah, won a freakin’ Super Bowl. How could I have forgotten?

Now for years, many assumed that if a head coach was ever able to actually bring a Lombardi Trophy back to the City of Brotherly Love, they would be deified as the “Patron Saint of the Cheesesteak” and thus be afforded a life-long contract – that’s just how desperate fans in Philly were to win it all – but for Pederson, that wasn’t the case.

No, between his vanilla offense, his maddening decision making, and his, um, uneasy relationship with Howie Roseman, Carson Wentz, and I’m sure many others, Pederson’s leash tightened with each passing season-ender and was relieved of his duties shortly after the 2020 NFL season.

Did the Eagles do Pederson dirty? Eh, only kind of. Yes, the front office provided Pederson with increasingly weaker rosters following his Super Bowl win and that, mixed with the perfect storm of badness that was 2020, played into the team bottoming out in his final season, but that isn’t the only reason things went south.

After losing Frank Reich to the Indianapolis Colts in a move that made Josh McDaniels South Philly’s enemy numero uno, Pederson never found a comparable offensive mind to help craft a formidable attack, instead opting to either hire from within to disastrous results or forgo an OC entirely for a slew of “senior offensive assistants.”

Had the Eagles hired Jim Caldwell as an assistant head coach with an eye on the QB position, maybe things would have been different. Maybe the offense would have been more resilient in 2020 and some of the bad habits Wentz developed could have been corrected before they went full-on nuclear.

Mind you, we’ll never truly know. That will forever be a great late-2010s “What if” alongside the McDaniels hiring but do you think another team would make that same mistake?

I doubt it.

Like clockwork, every year, a number of teams move on from their head coaches. While some of these squads will look to the college ranks for a promising you clipboard holder or hire from within, inevitably, one or more of said teams will opt to hire someone with pervious head coaching experience regardless of how their tenure ended at their previous spot.

The Dallas Cowboys hired ex-Green Bay Packers head coach Mike McCarthy in 2020, as did the now-Las Vegas Raiders with Jon Gruden in 2018, and for years now, teams have been trying to coax former Steelers head coach Bill Cowher out of retirement because that Super Bowl experience matters.

If, say, a team like the Browns or the Dolphins – both of whom Doug Pederson played for back in the day – fires their head coach and wants to land someone with the experience to get things over the top – a Doc Rivers type, if you will – Pederson would surely be among the top guys on their list, assuming they are willing to pair him up with quality coordinators, of course.

Need proof? Well, look no further than this very offseason, where the Seattle Seahawks reportedly targeted Pederson for their vacant offensive coordinator/assistant head coach position. Sure the situation isn’t quite analogous for obvious reasons, the fact that a perennial playoff team had interest in bringing Pederson aboard certainly suggests he isn’t a league-wide pariah.

Next. Jalen Hurts left off Chris Simms’ top 40 QB list. dark

So in summation, it’s not really a matter of if Doug Pederson will land another head coaching job post-Philadelphia Eagles, but when. His credentials are near-unprecedented on the open market, his win-loss record is on the right side of .500, and most importantly of all, he’s won a Super Bowl, a feat 12 teams can’t boast. For those squads, hiring Pederson would be an absolute home run amongst fanbases as desperate for a championship as that of the Eagles pre-2017.

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