The math was pretty simple heading into Week 16. If Doug Pederson were able to lead his Philadelphia Eagles to a win over the Dallas Cowboys with Washington losing to Carolina, Philadelphia would head into its season finale with a chance to capture the NFC East.
This all came with Philadelphia sitting at 4-9-1 on the season and having just recently benched a Doug Pederson protégée in that of quarterback Carson Wentz.
Rookie signal caller Jalen Hurts lived up to his end of the bargain early on against what was a 5-9 Cowboys team playing without multiple star players.
Unfortunately, this touchdown pass to DeSean Jackson to give Philadelphia a 14-3 lead did not end up resulting in an Eagles win. Instead, the team’s defense was torn to shreds by someone named Andy Dalton. It was downright embarrassing throughout the remainder of the game.
If it’s not one thing, it’s something else for this iteration of the Doug Pederson-led Eagles. All said, Dallas put up a resounding 513 total yards of offense and 37 points while playing without its star quarterback and three starters along the offensive line.
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Once the Eagles fell down by the score of 30-17 midway through the third quarter, it became evident that an offense Pederson had led to a Super Bowl title less than three years ago could not realistically come back. After all, the Eagles had not scored 30 points in a game since Week 17 of the 2019 season. That’s almost a calendar year.
So it has been written. The regression of Carson Wentz under center. Doug Pederson’s status as the toast of Philadelphia descending into boo-birds from the couches of Eagles fans the world over during this pandemic. The Eagles being unable to come back against an historically bad Cowboys team that had given up an average of 31 points per game heading into Sunday’s action.
So it has been written.
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It’s now time for the Philadelphia Eagles to fire Doug Pederson
By virtue of their humiliating loss to the Cowboys in Big D on Sunday, these Eagles sit at 4-10-1 on the season. They are now 22-24-1 since what seemed to be a franchise-altering winter day in Minnesota back on Feb. 4, 2018.
Since Doug Pederson saw Nick Foles vastly outplay Tom Brady en route to a 41-33 win over the Patriots in Super Bowl LII, it’s been completely downhill for the embattled head coach.
In talking about his status ahead of Sunday’s game, Pederson made it clear that the City of Brotherly Love is where his heart is.
“I don’t want out of Philly,” Pederson told The Associated Press on Tuesday (h/t NBC Philadelphia). “It is a great place to work.”
The feeling is highly unlikely to be mutual. A Philadelphia sports scene that once booed Santa Claus and all-time great MLBer Mike Schmidt will turn on a struggling head coach even more than the quarterback who led him into the abyss. That’s the backdrop as these Eagles finish up yet another lost season under the embattled Doug Pederson.
Once Jalen Hurts was intercepted by Cowboys corner Anthony Brown with the Eagles down 13 in the fourth quarter on Sunday, Doug Pederson had to know that his fate had been sealed in Philadelphia. No last-second effort to save his job. No get out of jail free card. It was over. Nothing will change the inevitable.
Will the Philadelphia Eagles fire Doug Pederson?
One game remaining on the Eagles’ regular-season schedule against the Washington Football Team. A game that means very little outside of seeing which losing team comes out of the NFC East. A Week 17 matchup that includes the Eagles being the only team in the pathetic division already eliminated from the race.
Why wait? What would be the reasoning for keeping Doug Pederson for one more week? He’s the lamest of lame ducks. Meanwhile, the Eagles can get started on what promises to be a wide-ranging head coach search. They can do so under recently-installed NFL rules that allow teams with vacancies to interview top assistants virtually before said team is eliminated from contention.
We have absolutely no idea if Eagles general manager Howie Roseman will be fired. He could very well follow Doug Pederson in the unemployment line. In no way does that mean president Don Smolenski and owner Jeffrey Lurie should delay the inevitable with the team’s head coach.
The writing is on the wall. The post Super Bowl honeymoon period ended eons ago. In today’s win-first NFL world, procrastination is not the way to make the light at the end of the tunnel more visible. It will lead to you holding your breath until you’re out of air, snuffing out the possibility of turning things around.
Doug Pederson should be out of a job Sunday night or Monday morning. It has been written. Now, make it a reality before the hopefulness of Christmas turns into the bleakness of the New Year’s.