During the regular season, Eagles head coach Doug Pederson speaks to the media a few times a week. Some press conferences are more interesting than others, but there are usually a few good tidbits in his answers to reporters’ questions. After an embarrassing Week 3 tie to the Cincinnati Bengals that involved some questionable coaching decisions, there were naturally a lot of questions.
Although he was already asked about it immediately after the game in his post-game press conference, Pederson was again asked about his puzzling decision to punt the ball near the end of overtime and essentially settle for a tie instead of trying to win. It sounds like he might regret that decision, as he should. Check out his answer below.
He also updates the injury statuses of TE Dallas Goedert, CB Avonte Maddox, WR DeSean Jackson, and T Jason Peters. Spoiler alert: Jason Peters apparently wasn’t injured on Sunday. He was just tired.
EAGLES HEAD COACH DOUG PEDERSON
Press Conference Transcript, September 28, 2020
Q. I’ll get the injury questions out of the way now. TE Dallas Goedert, CB Avonte Maddox, WR DeSean Jackson and T Jason Peters. What is the status of those four? (Zach Berman)
DOUG PEDERSON: In the matter of Dallas Goedert, it appears it’s a lower body. It appears that he’s going to miss some time. Just don’t have a timetable yet, but he is going to miss some time here with us. Avonte Maddox, another one lower body. Probably also going to maybe miss some time here with us as well. Jason Peters will be okay. He came away — when you’re playing 90-plus snaps and as humid as it was, it was just some fatigue that set in late in the game. But he’s going to be fine. Who was the fourth one you mentioned?
Q. And DeSean Jackson? (Zach Berman)
DOUG PEDERSON: DeSean is going to be a little more day-to-day. Again, the lower body. Day to day, optimistic for the game this week.
Q. On the radio this morning you kind of talked about the decision to punt. I know you’ve looked at the film now. Have you changed your mind a little bit? You can’t go back in time, obviously, but hindsight being 20/20, do you think you would have made a different decision there and tried to win the game? (Jamie Apody)
DOUG PEDERSON: Thinking about it, fourth and [12], 19 seconds on the clock. To me, looking at the decision, there’s a couple of things. Yeah, okay, you go for it; right? 19 seconds. You got a chance for — I mean, who knows what could happen. A big play, a DPI. We didn’t have any timeouts, so if the ball were completed in bounds or whatever, it would be hard to hustle up there and kick the field goal. If there were say five, six, seven seconds left on the clock, the decision to go for it would be a little bit easier, I think, to make in that situation. Felt comfortable with [K] Jake [Elliott] kicking the 58-yarder, obviously from the 41-yard line. That’s what we talked about prior to going into overtime. Normally for Jake, the 35-yard line is typically his kick line, but we know that [when] we get in these situations like this, we know we can stretch that out to the 40. He’s got all the leg to do that. So we felt comfortable there. So, either way you slice it, my decision, looking back, I probably would have elected to maybe go for it in that situation and try a ball down the field.
Q. With DeSean out of the lineup now for a while and also Dallas Goedert, they were your two top receivers coming into the game yesterday. What’s the challenge going to be like trying to get your offense to work without them? And also, why didn’t you go to WR J.J. Arcega-Whiteside very much yesterday? (Nick Fierro)
DOUG PEDERSON: The reason we didn’t go to J.J., he actually kind of came up before the game with another lower body injury in pregame. And so we had to limit his snaps during the game. He’ll be fine, though. He’s day to day. We should get him, hopefully, ready to go. But he’s another one that was limited yesterday a little bit that way. The thing that we look at now moving forward, we’re going to have to find creative and unique ways to use all our players on offense. The tight ends, the runners, obviously, with Carson. And we’ve done this before. We did it at the end of the season last year. We won the four straight [games] to get us into the postseason, and it appears we’re going to have to do that again.
Q. What’s your self-analysis through three games? Are you finding anything that you’re straying away from that you’d like to get back to? (Tim McManus)
DOUG PEDERSON: Well, the glaring thing for me as the coach is we’re not winning the turnover ratio. We’re obviously giving the ball away more than we’re taking it away. The penalties yesterday were way too many, 11 penalties yesterday for almost 100 yards. I thought we ran the ball effectively for the amount of times that we ran it. [RB] Miles [Sanders] did a nice job there in the backs. And quite frankly, we have to find ways now to utilize the guys we have as we talked about earlier, creative ways to get these guys open, and whether we do that by formations, we do that by motions. We have to continue to coach our young players. We have to get them ready to go, and they’re the ones that are going to be playing on the perimeter for us. So, right now we’re not a very good football team, as I said after the game, we’re not very smart. We’re shooting ourselves in the foot. We’re leaving touchdowns on the field offensively, and we’re just not executing. And those are things that we’re going to really look hard at this week, and if we have to simplify, we’ll simplify. If we have to go up tempo, we’ll go up tempo, things that have been successful in the past.
Q. How would you assess Jason Peters’ play yesterday before he left the game? (Dave Zangaro)
DOUG PEDERSON: I thought Jason was doing some nice things. There were a couple times he got edged a little bit. I thought overall he played pretty well. And even in the run game, he still plays at a high level and felt good about his performance. It wasn’t perfect, but he definitely was in the right spots and doing the right things for us.
Q. You referenced all the injuries that you guys have had and related it to two previous years when you guys were able to overcome them. At this point, is it no longer a coincidence that you guys are among the most injured teams in the NFL over the last three years and why do you think that is? (Jeff McLane)
DOUG PEDERSON: I think this is a physical game. I think these guys put their bodies at risk every week. I think in the case of Dallas Goedert and Avonte Maddox, the way they were tackled, the way they were landed upon, those things happen. And it’s unfortunate. It’s going to be a part of our game. And nobody said this business would be easy. No one said coaching would be easy and playing would be easy. We signed up for it and we’re going to coach our players and coach the ones that are healthy and ready to go and prepare for this week.
Q. How did WR Alshon Jeffery come out of those practices Thursday and Friday? And if he has a good week this week, do you think there’s a chance you might have him on Sunday? (Reuben Frank)
DOUG PEDERSON: He came out of last week good. We’re going to ramp him up a little bit more this week, give him a little bit more this week, and we’ll see where he’s at at the end of the week.
Q. Not to belabor this, but your quarterback Carson Wentz, we’ve been talking about this for three weeks now. You say you don’t want him to take too much on his shoulders and feel like he has to win the game himself. But what’s going on? He’s still at the bottom. Every week is a 60-something passer rating. You’re seeing picks that he’s never thrown before. How do you fix this? (Les Bowen)
DOUG PEDERSON: There are a couple of things. I think one of the ways that we do that, and then really to kind of maybe unclutter his mind some is to play fast, play up tempo where players don’t have to think. They just react. And that has been a recipe for us over the years, and it’s something that we may have to lean on a little bit more. We’ll take a look at the game plans and make sure there’s not a lot of maybe moving parts or things that from a quarterback’s perspective that he has to get us in and out of. Just do more of the run it play variety where you don’t have to think about a lot of things and just somehow help him to free up his mind and let him play and make the plays that we know he’s capable of making and keep coaching him and keep coaching all the guys and put together a game plan this week to go play San Francisco.
Q. Would you think you’d be in that position in year five with QB Carson Wentz? (Les Bowen)
DOUG PEDERSON: I think you’re always learning. I think you’re always growing. I don’t think anybody gets to the point where they’ve got things completely mastered, so to speak. Even some of the top quarterbacks would say that, and they’re constantly, I think, getting better. And if you’re not striving to get better, I think you’re going the other way. And we have to make sure that we’re going in the right direction.
Q. To that point about Carson, I want to talk about two specific runs we saw from him, that 24-yard run on third down and then that 7-yard run for a touchdown. Does that speak to maybe the options not being there on offense right now? You talk about trying to get creative, Wentz having to do it himself because you’re not seeing those availabilities from receivers? (Kristen Rodgers)
DOUG PEDERSON: That’s just the point. I don’t want to feel like Carson has to put the weight on his shoulders and carry the entire football team. We have to do a better job as a whole unit. Everybody has to do their particular job on specific plays. One of the things probably that we can rely on maybe a little bit more with Carson is his ability to escape the pocket. Those big plays yesterday came on just that, his ability to extend plays. And we’ve encouraged him to do that. It just so happened yesterday — and really you saw it even in the Rams game the week before. He made a huge scramble up the middle for seven or eight yards for a first down. And being able to do that puts pressure on the defense. And that’s one of the talents that he has and we have to continue to find ways, whether it’s by design or just by him being creative and extending plays to help the offense down the field.
Q. One last question on the punt at the end of the game. In looking back in the plays leading up to the field goal attempt, were you happy with the aggressiveness of the play calls before lining up for the field goal? (Bo Wulf)
DOUG PEDERSON: The situation, obviously they were pressuring us, and I didn’t want to keep [TE] Zach Ertz in protection. I didn’t necessarily want to keep Miles [Sanders] and the guys in. We had to go to a little bit more of the shorter, intermediate style passing game just to get the ball out of Carson’s hand in those situations. And we had a couple of run chances there that we just missed on a block or two, and it would have put us probably a little bit closer to our kick line.
Q. It looked like there was a little bit more, I guess, kind of chippiness out of the team yesterday. There was the unnecessary roughness after the punt. There were a couple of times where guys were getting up and jawing a little bit about the Bengals. Is that frustration? Was it something the Bengals were doing? What did you see as the origin of that? (Daniel Gallen)
DOUG PEDERSON: I just think it’s the players being players. There’s always chipping that goes on. Obviously right now when you don’t have the crowd noise in the stadium, you can hear both sides talking and chipping back and forth. It was a hard-fought game, and obviously emotions run high, and we have to do our part to kind of keep our cool and level heads, but it’s part of the game. It’s unfortunate that we got the one penalty there on [RB] Corey [Clement], but he’ll learn from it. But it’s just the way the game was going yesterday.
Q. When it came to that fourth and 12 play was that are more of an analytics based decision or was it more of a feel thing and also could you share who else was involved with that decision? (Chris Franklin)
DOUG PEDERSON: You’re talking about after the false start?
Q. Yes. (Chris Franklin)
DOUG PEDERSON: Well, again, I’ve already made this statement, that I would have probably elected to go for it in that situation, and so the decision there is not an analytical decision. The fact was there was 19 seconds on the clock and now you’re talking around midfield. Now you’re back at the 46-yard line. It’s a situation where you take the shot. And I learned from it, and I’ll move on.
Q. I know we’ve talked about how much you love play calling and that’s the favorite part of your job really. But have you given any thought to maybe surrendering some of those duties with the team kind of needing a spark at this point? (Ed Kracz)
DOUG PEDERSON: No. I haven’t. I love doing it. It’s the exciting part for me. I get to see the game, obviously, differently as a quarterback and see it kind of through their eyes and through the offense’s eyes, and I haven’t thought about that at all.
Q. You said you don’t want Carson to feel like he has to put the burden of the offense on himself. RB Miles Sanders was having a really good first half averaging like eight yards a carry, but he finished with like 18 carries overall. Why move away from the run in such a close game? (Mike Kaye)
DOUG PEDERSON: It just so happened that in Miles’ case, you go back the week before, and not to make excuses or whatever, but there was a little fatigue that set in. Miles alluded to that. He was battling through some things yesterday during the game, and we had to be cautious late in the game. And there’s times where you make the decision to maybe shift gears and go a little different direction, and that’s what we did yesterday. But Miles, moving forward Miles is obviously a big part of what we do, and I actually thought he not only ran the ball, but blocked well in pass protection as well.
Q. Just to clarify, it was fatigue and not an injury? (Mike Kaye)
DOUG PEDERSON: Correct.
