Three years after the Eagles won a Super Bowl title, the coach who brought the Lombardi Trophy to Philadelphia is out.
The Eagles fired head coach Doug Pederson, the team confirmed Monday.
“Coach Pederson and I had the opportunity to sit down and discuss what [our] collective vision would look like moving forward,” Eagles chairman and CEO Jeffrey Lurie said in a statement. “After taking some time to reflect on these conversations, I believe it is in both of our best interests to part ways.
"We all look forward to the day he will be inducted into the Eagles Hall of Fame as a Super Bowl-winning head coach and we are confident he will have success with his next team.”
NFL Network was the first to report the firing.
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Pederson’s final season was rocky, a 4-11-1 campaign including the demotion of turnover-prone quarterback Carson Wentz and a highly criticized decision to abandon quarterback Jalen Hurts in the final quarter of his season finale in favor of veteran journeyman Nate Sudfeld.
In five seasons, Pederson went 42-37 (.531) with 2020 marking his second losing season. The Eagles advanced to the playoffs in three of the five – each year from 2017 to 2019 – and won the Super Bowl with backup quarterback Nick Foles after Wentz tore his ACL in December.
"As difficult as it it to say goodbye, I will always look back on my time here with appreciation and respect," Pederson said in a statement. "Although I am disappointed that this chapter of my career has come to an end, I am extremely proud of what we accomplished together."
Lurie met with Eagles president and CEO Jeffrey Lurie two days after the season concluded, according to ESPN, before a second scheduled meeting that resulted in the termination. The separation from Pederson comes on the heels of an ESPN report that the relationship between him and Wentz was “fractured beyond repair.” Pederson denied that.
“Listen, I'm not going to speak for Carson, obviously, but I can speak for myself and say that, yeah, the relationship is good. It's fine," Pederson said. "It's something that we're going to continue to build upon.
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"Listen, I know Carson's disappointed. It's not the season that he had anticipated. It's not the season I had anticipated as the head coach. There were a lot of moving parts. It's not about one guy here. It takes all of us and that's something that we've stressed a lot here.
The Eagles had their worst offensive performance under Pederson in 2020, finishing 26th in scoring with an average of 20.9 points per game, and 28th in passing, averaging 207.9 yards per game.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Monday that Pederson proposed minor changes to his coaching staff. That included promoting Press Taylor to offensive coordinator. In addition, Pederson wanted to either promote defensive line coach Matt Burke to defensive coordinator or bring back Cory Undlin, who had been the Eagles' defensive backs coach from 2013-19 before leaving to become the Lions' defensive coordinator in 2020.
The Lions allowed the most points in the NFL at 519, the second most in NFL history.
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