Nick Piccone
Doug Pederson may already be losing control of his team. And that might not be entirely his fault.
After the Eagles released Josh Huff yesterday, I automatically thought that it wasn’t Doug Pederson’s decision – despit Dave Spadaro’s insistence he had something to do with it – to make that call. While Huff wasn’t the best player on the field for the team, clearly, he’s had some spurts that show why he could be a dynamic special teams player for an NFL team.
Howie Roseman spoke to reporters yesterday after the news broke of Huff’s release, making me believe he’s the one who made the final decision. Pederson said the day before that Huff would play Sunday. Now he’s not on an NFL team. That’s not Pederson reversing course. That’s somebody above him making the call.
According to Jeff McLane, things have become lax in the Eagles’ locker room. “Some players had recently become lax about certain rules, several Eagles said,” McLane states. “For instance, three players had been late for meetings on Thursday morning, according to team sources.”
That’s not good. It’s not even halfway through Pederson’s first season at the helm, and players are already taking liberties. Maybe that has something to do with their lack of playing time – or maybe that’s the answer Pederson has, to limit their playing time. There’s no way of knowing who the players are talking about, but we could take several guesses.
Once the decision was made to hire Pederson as the team’s new head coach after Chip Kelly, many thought he would just be a mouthpiece for Jeffrey Lurie and Howie Roseman. He didn’t have the clout Andy Reid did during his tenure here, and he was a first-year head coach. His team’s great start to the season masked a bunch of questions that we’re now asking.