Steve Wyche: Eagles Doug Pederson did a lot of damage

doug_pederson_dec2020ariz-2

Doug Pederson benched Jalen Hurts in the fourth quarter of Philadelphia’s 20-14 loss to Washington (7-9) on Sunday, and Eagles players were not happy about it. In fact, two players reportedly had to be restrained from Pederson after the game.

How much damage did Pederson’s decision do in the Eagles’ locker room?

“A lot, a lot,” NFL Network analyst Steve Wyche said on After Hours with Amy Lawrence. “It’s one of those things like, ‘I can’t trust this guy now.’ That’s the worst. I like Doug, [but] he’s got a lot of repairing to do in the offseason – and a lot of that depends on what they do with Carson Wentz. They’re going to have to get some people out of there. They’re going to have to bring some fresh faces in.”

The Eagles (4-12), who finished with their worst record since 2012, improved their draft stock with the loss and will pick sixth in the 2021 NFL Draft. But Pederson’s decision won’t soon be forgotten.

“Yes, people are going to say it’s one game and Doug was doing what a lot of teams do,” Wyche said. “But in that circumstance, when you’ve got people who sucked it up all year with COVID and playing through injuries and things like that – they’re trying to compete. They want to play spoiler. They wanted to knock the Washington Football Team out of the running, and then you do something like that, it’s kind of like, ‘You know what? You’re really showing us who you [are]. Whether you’re taking orders from up top or whether you did it yourself, that’s not how we do things here. You’ve been preaching one thing all season long, and now you get here and you do something else? That’s not how we rock.’”

Pederson is 42-37-1 in five seasons in Philadelphia. He led the Eagles to a Super Bowl title in 2017, but he is 22-25 over the last three years.

“This is really going to be an interesting offseason with Doug Pederson – what he does with the staff, personnel,” Wyche said. “But he’s got a lot of mending to do.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes:

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>