Eagles head coach Doug Pederson spoke to the media on Monday, one day after his team laid an egg against the Washington Football Team in the opener. In today’s Zoom call with reporters, he was asked questions about Carson Wentz, the rookie wide receivers, DeSean Jackson’s playing time, and the status of the team’s eleventy-billion injured players.
He looked exasperated and frustrated at times during the press conference, which is to be expected after how his team performed yesterday. He has also probably watched the game three times by now, which can’t be fun.
Anyway, here is the transcript. Feel free to reach out on Twitter with any thoughts about the coach’s answers.
EAGLES HEAD COACH DOUG PEDERSON
Press Conference Transcript
September 14, 2020
Q. Now that you’ve seen the tape and you’ve seen the game from QB Carson Wentz, especially the turnovers, what did you see from that, and are you still addressing that fine line of trying to extend plays versus maybe being a little bit safer? (John McMullen)
COACH PEDERSON: After looking at the tape, it’s kind of how I felt and what I saw, live and in person yesterday in the game. We just missed. We missed on a throw. The throw was — came out of his hand after watching the tape kind of slowing things down. Looked like it came out of his hand, ball could have slipped a little bit coming out of his hand. It was left inside. So it happens. Those are things that are going to happen. Especially when it’s warm and it just is part of the game. It’s just going to take place.
As far as the aggressiveness goes, I’m still going to maintain the aggressiveness. Look, as I said this morning, a 17-0 lead or a 27-10 lead, in any football game in this league is not enough, and you have to continue to maintain aggressiveness. You have to — especially when you have momentum, right, and it’s kind of on your side. You’ve got to use that to your advantage, and my thinking at that time, too, was to try to get points before half with the ball to start the third quarter. We’ve done that many times here where we’ve scored and then come out and scored touchdowns to start the third quarter. That’s a lot of my mindset in these games.
Q. I guess John’s question was about Carson’s aggressiveness in terms of holding the ball too long and not throwing it away or not throwing it into the dirt. It seems like we’ve asked you this question every year and you do point out that you want Carson to have that aggressiveness and that he does make big plays but you also preach to him about living for the next play or the next series and it seems like it’s still not — it’s going in one ear and out the other. How do you address that with Carson and why isn’t he hearing you? (Jeff McLane)
COACH PEDERSON: We still have to continue to address him and to address those issues. It’s part of the football game. We just have to keep talking that it’s okay to throw the ball away. It’s okay to dirt the ball on a screen pass or something of that nature and look, it’s something that we’ve just got to continue working through.
There is a fine line, obviously, as we know, between the aggressiveness, but at the same time, we want to be smart.
Q. Curious why WR DeSean Jackson only played 54 percent of the snaps yesterday? (Eliot Shorr-Parks)
COACH PEDERSON: Obviously he’s a big part of the offense, but at the same time, we want to make sure that he’s a guy that’s healthy and fresh for us down the long haul here. I think each week, I would anticipate his rep count to increase as we go, and we’re going to be smart with him but we also know that he’s an explosive receiver for us and we want to get him on the field as much as possible moving forward.
Q. Like Jeff said a second ago, you know, this is something we’ve asked you about for five years probably about Carson holding the ball and trying to make a play and his competitiveness. Is it fixable? Is it something at this point that he can learn to do and be smarter with the ball in those situations? (Reuben Frank)
COACH PEDERSON: I do believe he can learn that, and I do believe that we can continue to coach it better. You’re probably going, well, it’s a broken record, but it’s what we have to do. We have to continue to discuss and continue to talk with him about it, and look, if he’s holding the ball, there’s a reason. There’s a reason, maybe we’ve got to coach the routes better. Maybe I have to call a play better. I’ve got to put our team in a better situation. There’s all types of scenarios and possibilities on every play, and it’s all about the communication that we have throughout the week.
Q. Are there any moments when you looked back at yesterday’s game where you can maybe say, okay, this is because we had a lack of preseason? (Kristen Rodgers)
COACH PEDERSON: Well, that’s a great question. I went into that game going, you know, are we going to — how many pre-snap penalties are we going to have, are we going to be able to jump off-sides, are there going to be holding calls, how is our execution going to be, are the starters going to be able to hold up? There’s all kinds of things without having preseason games, how are our young players going to play. There’s all kinds of things that rush through my head without having preseason games.
For the most part, yesterday, having three penalties, I thought we came out from that aspect of it pretty good. The way we started the football game, I’ve talked a lot about this, our football team starting fast. Defense got off the field, offense goes down and scores, and those are things that are positives that we take away from this game that we can build on.
But yeah, when you don’t have preseason games to truly evaluate where you are, makes it a little more difficult.
Q. How did C/G Nate Herbig grade out at right guard, and is he the starter going forward at that position? (Dave Zangaro)
COACH PEDERSON: I thought Nate did well. Wasn’t perfect, but for his first start, he’s a smart guy, and he graded well. As of right now as we move forward, we’re going to continue to work him in there at right guard, and I think he’ll get more and more comfortable the more reps he gets in there, and you know, works with [C Jason] Kelce more and so again, it wasn’t perfect, but really felt comfortable coming away with his performance.
Q. Speaking of aggressiveness and your role, do you factor in the other team at all, and the reason I ask that is Washington really didn’t drive more than 48 yards on any of those scores. They got the ball six times in their last nine possessions in your territory. If you had been a little less aggressive, could you maybe have won the game? Did you think about that when you were looking at the film? (Les Bowen)
COACH PEDERSON: I guess you’re asking me if I could have run the ball when we were up 17-0 the rest of the game. Yeah, that’s being less aggressive, but listen, I’m going to do what I feel is the best interest of the football team and we cannot turn the ball over. We cannot have eight sacks. We cannot put our defense on the short side of the field as an offense. We have to execute better on fourth down. We have a guy that — we have a guy open; we don’t execute the protection. We drop a pass on another fourth down in the game.
So there’s all kinds of things that we can point the finger at. I can do a better job with a couple of play calls throughout the game, and those are all things that we take away from this first game and we are probably sitting here asking different questions.
Look, this is a game where you have — I have to do what I feel is in the best interest of the football team. We practice these situations all the time. I do have to be smart game-by-game. You have to make smart decisions and you’ve got to trust our players, trust our quarterback, trust our schemes, how well is the defense playing. So I think there’s all of that that factors into the aggressiveness factor for us.
Q. Do you anticipate having RB Miles Sanders and T Lane Johnson available to you this Sunday and if you could give us a status update on DE Vinny Curry? (Tim McManus)
COACH PEDERSON: Yeah, I’ll update you. Vinny and [CB] Craig James both significant injuries, are going to miss some time here in the next couple of weeks. Don’t anticipate either one of those back. On Miles and Lane and some of the other guys, [DE] Derek Barnett, we are going to increase their practice time this week. We are going to see as the week goes on where they are and hopefully they will be available for the game on Sunday.
But again, it’s kind of day-by-day with those guys.
(Side note: there was a report earlier today that said there is “decent hope” that both Miles Sanders and Lane Johnson will be able to play in Week 2)
Q. On the offensive line, these injuries weren’t necessarily new injuries in terms of Lane Johnson, obviously Andre Dillard and during training camp, most of the first team snaps seemed to go to G/T Matt Pryor, T Jordan Mailata. When did you settle on T Jack Driscoll and C/G Nate Herbig on the right side, and could they have used more time with the first team during the summer? (Zach Berman)
COACH PEDERSON: Well first of all it’s unfortunate because you guys weren’t able to be out there for the majority of training camp and to see how we were doing practice and who was getting the reps and it wasn’t really until we started the padded practice that you’re able to see kind of what was going on.
These guys, they were getting reps at different positions. So just to kind of clarify, Driscoll was getting right tackle reps. He was also getting guard reps. Mailata was getting both tackle left and right. Pryor was getting his work in there, and as we go, we begin to see who kind of is kind of having the hot hand, so to speak, and playing well.
And then as we got into this past game week, obviously we settled on Nate Herbig and of course with Lane Johnson on game day being down with Jack Driscoll and felt comfortable there because they were getting the reps during the week.
Q. As Carson was sort of falling off there a little bit in the second half, not falling off, but not maybe looking himself, what was your communication like with him in the second half? How were you trying to get him to turn things around? (Bo Wulf)
COACH PEDERSON: We were just talking about the next series, the next set of plays. He was asking me what I was thinking and I was explaining to him exactly how we were going to attack and go back out and get the offense moving again. It’s just unfortunate in the second half that we shot ourselves in the foot on first down. I think we had 13 times we were second down and seven-plus and then we were another 11 times we were third and seven-plus in the entire game and those are hard to overcome and you’ve got to make sure you’re doing well on first down. You’ve heard me say this before. And we just didn’t do that enough.
He and I were talking in the second half and putting a plan together prior to the offense taking the field.
Q. I was wondering, did you have a conversation with TE Zach Ertz, seemed like he took that drop pretty personally. At some point, is there anything that you can say to a veteran with that type of experience after a negative play like that? (Mike Kaye)
COACH PEDERSON: Things like that, I even go back to the [WR] Alshon [Jeffery] drop in the postseason game a couple years ago and listen, you just, again, you hate to see it happen. It’s part of the game. These are veteran players and you’ve just got to continue to encourage and continue to motivate.
It’s like, you know, I equate it sometimes when a quarterback throws an interception, the best thing to do is get right back out there and throw the ball again, right and so for guys like that, even though Zach was at the end of the game, you want to get back out there and throw him another pass, somewhere, somehow, so he can get that feel back.
But just encourage him, you know. We’ve got a lot of football left ahead of us and he’s going to make more big plays for us than just that one, that one play.
Q. You’ll hear coaches say that you can kind of make the most adjustments between game one and game two, especially in a week of practice because you learn the most about your team in game one, especially in your case without a preseason, not seeing what you had on the field there. What did you learn about your team yesterday that you can take into next week? (Jamie Apody)
COACH PEDERSON: I think a couple things. One, I’ve talked a lot about, and I mentioned this earlier about beginning and starting football games fast, right, and what I mean by that is obviously the defense getting off the field early, offense scoring points early. That was an area that we kind of struggled in offensively last year, being able to score those first quarter points and that’s something we can build on.
I think, too, the other thing was we pride ourselves on sort of a tempo style of offense, and that was another aspect that we actually, probably the most production we had was in our tempo offense yesterday and that’s another thing that we can look at.
Special teams. When you look at this game yesterday, special teams with the addition of some of the young players that we’ve sort of interjected on our special teams, you look at [S] Rudy Ford yesterday and his performance on punt and what he was able to do and be so disruptive, those are all positives that we can take away from this game.
I think you look at another one with [CB] Darius Slay who matched up with [Washington Football Team WR] Terry McLaurin yesterday, and you know, as we go each week, there’s going to be that one receiver that Slay is going to go up against and he did an outstanding job yesterday.
So there’s those little things there that can become big things as we move along each and every week as we get ready for our next opponent.
Q. How would you assess the play of your rookie wide receivers? WR Jalen Reagor had that long 55-yard reception and he seemed like he was open on at least another one. How would you assess his play and also WR John Hightower? (Martin Frank)
COACH PEDERSON: I thought both of them were just okay. I think Jalen, you can see the explosiveness, the speed with Jalen, being able to get behind the secondary. We just missed on the one shot. Carson overthrew him on the one post route but they were able to connect on another deep throw.
Listen, it’s something that we have to continue to practice. We have got to spend time with these guys. Again, it goes back to possibly missing preseason time, preseason games with these guys, and you know, there’s a game speed and there’s a practice speed, and so we’ve got to continue to coach our young players up on game speed and what it’s like.
They are going to look at this film and they are going to make the necessary corrections and it was good for them obviously to play and do the things they did so they can get better moving forward.
Q. You guys and Washington went out on to the field together for “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and you stayed in the locker room during the National Anthem. What were the mechanics of those two gestures coming together and what was the communication like for you with the players leading up to that? (Daniel Gallen)
COACH PEDERSON: We were on the field for pregame and obviously with the beginning of the regular season, opening weekend. I know our players were in communication with their players and I had actually reached out to Coach Rivera [Washington Football Team head coach Ron Rivera] during the week and let him know sort of our intention and he gave me his intention and then the players, the players communicated everything else amongst themselves.
I thought everything came off really, really well. It was a really good moment on the field with both teams. Being able to not only be together with them like that, but to see the video, to listen to the National Anthem and to see sort of that environment was pretty special.
Q. How is DE Brandon Graham? (Reuben Frank)
COACH PEDERSON: He’s in the [concussion] protocol.
