Doug Pederson’s firing made sense to nearly everyone — except FS1’s LeSean McCoy.
Over the past 48 hours, both Pederson and McCoy made headlines, though for very different reasons. After taking aim at Eric Dickerson, McCoy unexpectedly came to the defense of an NFL figure with far fewer accolades.
Before diving into McCoy’s defense of Pederson, it’s worth noting that the now-former Jacksonville Jaguars head coach and “Shady” overlapped in Philadelphia during Pederson’s time as an offensive quality control coach (2009-10) and quarterbacks coach (2011-12).
On Monday’s episode of The Facility, McCoy tried to make Pederson’s firing a referendum on the current state of the NFL. If he wanted to make that argument and weighed it with Trent Baalke getting to keep his job, that’s a different story, but the Super Bowl-winning head coach has seemingly been a dead man walking all season long.
It was only a matter of when, not if.
“The league is confused right now,” McCoy said. “All you want to do is get a quarterback because he plays the position — he’s up for his contract — and wherever he’s drafted high at, ‘We gotta keep him.’ And now, the result of that is look at Doug Pederson getting fired. Doug Pederson is a really, really good coach. He’s a winning coach. He comes from the Andy Reid tree, so you know what that’s about.”
Before getting fired early Monday morning, Pederson recorded a 5-18 record in his last 23 games.
“If you look at his whole path, he’s actually one of the coordinators that coached for the Chiefs that actually called plays,” McCoy added. “He does that well, then he goes to Philadelphia. What’s he do there? He wins a championship. They don’t win it with Carson Wentz; it was with Nick Foles…. And then he goes to Jacksonville, they say, ‘We need somebody to save our quarterback because he’s really not that good, but we took him No. 1 pick overall, so we got to do something about it.’
“You bring him in there, he helps Trevor Lawrence out, but how much can you help a guy that’s not that good? And then you pay these quarterbacks, give them all this money, and when they don’t do well because they’re not that good of a player, and now you gotta blame somebody. Who do you blame? Let’s blame the head coach. But you’re going to blame a winning head coach that’s been winning his whole life. It don’t make sense.”
McCoy said the same issue was happening with the Miami Dolphins.
Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel has notably not been fired.
“I can go to so many different teams that it’s happened like this,” he said. “And it’s like, we’re gonna blame somebody because you’re not going to blame the quarterback. Let’s go back to making these guys earn it. Listen, bro, if I’m going to pay you this type of money to be a franchise quarterback, you gotta earn that. And when you earn that, you won’t have good coaches getting fired.”
Is the good coach in the room with us?
Pederson is well-accomplished in his own right, but it feels like the game has passed him by in Jacksonville. Not only did he grow prickly with reporters, but he also dismissed questions about his job security while throwing his own players under the bus. He struggled to answer even basic questions about Mac Jones and, in the end, let his actions do more of the talking than his career achievements.
“Now you got to go on this whole coaching research to find a good coach when you already have one,” McCoy added. “And then you go out there, you might make a mistake because you’re trying to find something to help out your quarterback. And it’s sad, because I know Doug Pederson personally… It don’t matter what coach you bring in for Trevor Lawrence. It could be Urban Meyer… It could be a Doug Pederson. It don’t matter.
“Now, if you get Andy Reid, it might be different. But, anybody else, they can’t save Trevor Lawrence and the Jaguars; he’s not a good player.”