Doug Pederson is Primed to Prove the Eagles Wrong

While the official 2022 NFL schedule won’t be out until the spring, that's about logistics and things like dates and times. The Eagles' opponents are already known for what will be Nick Sirianni’s second season at the helm.

And 24 hours ago the Jacksonville Jaguars might have been the most lackluster opponent on the list for most outside the one or two randoms who might have been Trevor Lawrence fans dating back to the 2021 No. 1 overall pick’s college days at Clemson.

Now the Jags coming to Lincoln Financial Field is the same kind of main-event matchup as the dastardly Dallas Cowboys and that’s because Doug Pederson will be returning to the place in which his statue stands.

The Jaguars jumped the gun by a couple of hours, landing on Pederson on the eve of the fourth anniversary of Super Bowl LII, the only Lombardi Trophy in Eagles franchise history and the win that should have earned Pederson more rope with a front office that always viewed him through a 2016 tint.

We’ve hired Doug Pederson as head coach.#DUUUVAL pic.twitter.com/CE58SjM3o1
— Jacksonville Jaguars (@Jaguars) February 4, 2022

Revisionist history be damned.

The Eagles wanted Adam Gase and Ben McAdoo (perhaps, even Tom Coughlin) in 2016 before settling on Pederson, who quickly turned a corporate phrase like "emotional intelligence" into a leaving, breathing part of the Jeffrey Lurie lexicon by uniting a locker room.

Before the 2017 season after an overachieving 7-9 start for Pederson, however, there were already whispers of him being a one-and-done coach and the scapegoat was going to be the now-beloved Frank Reich before Pederson first flashed what has become his trademark as a head coach: loyalty to his staff.

Lightning struck once the season began, though. Jake Elliott’s 61-yard field goal against the New York Giants, Carson Wentz’s MVP-level play, the unlikely re-imagining of the offense once Wentz went down by Pederson, Reich, and John DeFilippo.

From there it was Jalen Mills stopping Julio Jones, Patrick Robinson’s pick-six, The Philly Special, Zach Ertz on fourth-and-one, right up until Brandon Graham’s strip-sack of Tom Brady and Reich calling his boss a “freakin’ rock star” in the bowels of U.S. Bank Stadium.

Pederson gave Lurie and the city of Philadelphia something even a first-ballot Hall of Fame coach could never deliver.

I remember joking that Pederson won a lifetime dispensation card when the confetti was coming down in Minneapolis.

Turns out he didn’t even earn a mulligan.

Despite losing Reich and DeFilippo, Pederson and the Eagles made the playoffs again in 2019 and 2019 before the wheels came off in 2020 due to historic offensive line attrition, and the head-shaking descent of Wentz as a quarterback.

In between was the scapegoating of assistants like Mike Groh and Carson Walch before Pederson died on the hill of Press Taylor and Cory Undlin, ironically coaches the Eagles thought were good enough before Pederson ever returned to the organization as the head coach.

Fast forward to 2022 and Pederson is again the second or perhaps even the third choice on the First Coast of Florida despite his Super Bowl cachet, certainly behind Byron Leftwich and maybe Matt Eberflus, the former balking at Shad Khan’s dysfunctional setup and the latter deciding Chicago was the better bet.

Pederson, though, seems to have learned from dealing with the sharks in Philadelphia, and the smart money is on former Minnesota GM Rick Spielman joining the Jaguars organization to help Pederson remake it.

And then you have Lawrence, a prospect with skills that dwarf Wentz’s even prior to the latter’s ACL and LCL injury that sped up the decline.

It's becoming clear that Pederson has everything he needs in Jacksonville to prove the Eagles wrong.

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-John McMullen contributes Eagles coverage for SI.com's EagleMaven and is the NFL Insider for JAKIB Media. You can listen to John, alongside legendary sports-talk host Jody McDonald every morning from 8-10 on ‘Birds 365,” streaming live on both PhillyVoice.com and YouTube. John is also the host of his own show "Extending the Play" on AM1490 in South Jersey. You can reach him at jmcmullen44@gmail.com or on Twitter @JFMcMullen

Ed Kracz is the publisher of SI.com’s Eagle Maven and co-host of the Eagles Unfiltered Podcast. Check out the latest Eagles news at www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles or www.eaglemaven.com and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.