A Virtual Offseason Tour with Doug Pederson

For everyone around the NFL, the first virtual offseason is uncharted territory.

For everyone around the NFL, the first virtual offseason is uncharted territory.

All 32 teams are essentially navigating blindly with no history to fall back on, so many of the paths have differed with Sean Payton’s New Orleans Saints at one end of the spectrum and the Philadelphia Eagles on the other.

Payton, a sometimes golfing buddy of Doug Pederson, essentially told his players to stay safe and be ready for training camp in the hopes of things ramping up in late-July or early-August in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many other teams around the league have done virtual team meetings and eschewed virtual workouts.

Pederson has incorporated everything allowed by the league and the NFLPA.

“It's something that I definitely had time to think about the offseason when we had to leave our building around March 13th, March 14th at that time,” Pederson explained when asked by SI.com about his virtual template. “It gave me time to prepare and time to think about how I wanted to handle the offseason."

The conclusion was to integrate everyone together due to a host of new staff additions, including the incoming assistants and new director of sports performance Ted Rath.

"I just felt like with so many new staff members, even Ted Rath being new to the team, new to the sports performance department, that I wanted our guys to be exposed as much as I could to him and our strength and conditioning staff," Pederson said. “I basically wanted to put our guys in an offseason program. I wanted them to work out. I wanted to do meetings.”

For the Eagles, the offseason program started on April 27 with virtual workouts for veteran players.

“It's a voluntary offseason program, but we had just about – well, on the first phone call message, we had everybody involved, and we've continued to have everybody involved,” said Pederson. “That's exciting because guys are taking this thing seriously.”

The rookies joined on May 11 and started their second virtual week as Eagles on Monday

“Now, we're basically into our second full week of the entire football team. And then, basically, it boils down to virtual workouts and virtual meetings,” said Pederson. “We're still in a phase where we are going to continue with our virtual workouts, and then our coaches, alongside of that, work with the players with their virtual meetings.”

Pederson addresses the entire team twice a week and things branch off from there with the sports science department overseeing the virtual workouts and the position coaches handling their own fiefdoms, only with players scattered across the country versus gathering at the NovaCare Complex.

“(Special Teams Coordinator) Coach (Dave) Fipp is meeting with the veterans," said Pederson. "He's also meeting with the rookies. Same with the veteran coaches.

"They are meeting with their veteran players and they are meeting with their rookies. That's just the nature of where we are right now and what we're doing, and we'll continue this to the end of the offseason program.”

At the end of the week, assistants must communicate updates to Pederson.

“One of the things that I've required my staff to do, at the end of every week, is e-mail me or text me a one-liner on how the players are doing,” he said, “how are they understanding the information being taught.”

Whether the Eagles are doing it right will only be determined by hindsight.

At the moment, it's about going with his gut for Pederson.

“I just didn't feel – and listen, this is my own belief – I just didn't want guys to be idle,” said Pederson. “I think when you become idle, you get a little bit … it becomes a challenge. And so, this way, it gets the guys up. It gets the guys moving. It gets the guys thinking about football.

“is it right? I don't know. We still don't know if training camp is going to start on time or not. But, at the same time, I do know that at least we are getting some football done and hopefully we'll be better off for it.”

John McMullen contributes Eagles coverage for SI.com's EagleMaven and is the NFL Insider for JAKIB Media. You can listen to John every Monday and Friday on SIRIUSXM’s Tony Bruno Show with Harry Mayes, and every Tuesday and Thursday with Eytan Shander on SBNation Radio. You can reach him at jmcmullen44@gmail.com or on Twitter @JFMcMullen