Q. In Carson's fifth year in the league and fifth year working with you, why are you seeing his production and his performance regress?
COACH PEDERSON: Progress?
Q. Regress.
COACH PEDERSON: Oh, regress. I'm sorry. It cut out there a second.
You know, it's a good question. For us it's a matter of continuing to work. I think as coaches and players, we continue to strive to get better every single day. I just don't want Carson to feel like he has to make all the plays every single time. I want him to just be Carson and you guys know him, you've been around him, you've heard him, his demeanor. He wants to do everything right and we've given him control to do that, but we just have to continue to work to get better.
I don't think anybody can totally master the sport. You're constantly learning and getting better, and that's what we've got to do and continue to coach that is.
Q. Along those lines, your relationship with Carson from a quarterback/play caller standpoint, as a reference point with Nick, it seemed like it was easier, at least maybe to the casual observer, like if there was a natural mesh between what his strengths were and what you were calling. Do you agree that it's been a little bit did you ever to get on the same page with Carson and what are your thoughts on that?
COACH PEDERSON: Well, I think, you know, you're talking about two different guys, obviously, two different personalities. Two guys that approach the game a little bit differently. You tailor it to their strengths and that was one of the things that I had to do with Nick when he took over a few years ago, is find out what he liked. That's what we do with Carson, even to today, and as we even in-game make decisions, continuing to have conversations on the sideline, you know, we and Press and myself, just what do you like, what are you seeing, what do you want to -- what would you like for me to call or if I'm not calling something, let me know; that way I can get it into the game. And both guys are different, and we understand that, and just want to make sure that Carson does feel comfortable with the game plan, and you know, because quite honestly, the quarterbacks have input, right, just as Nick had input, and all the guys have input with what we're doing each week.
Q. In watching the film of the defense, what were the main reasons why the defenders were biting so much on the play fakes and getting fooled? And who is responsible primarily for communication pre-snap? Is it Nate? Is it Rodney? Is it both?
COACH PEDERSON: As far as the playaction, as far as the biting on stuff, you know, it comes with -- with the Rams, there's a lot of moving parts, right. There's a tight end reset and then possibly a jet motion, or there could be obviously two pre-snap motions and then at the snap, here comes the third element in the offense. And they do a great job of that as far as just marrying that up with the run game and keeping you off balance that way. That's their whole -- that's their style and what they do and they do it well.
From time to time, you just get caught up in the playaction game and you're trying to support the run; you have run responsibilities, right, as linebackers and safeties, you have to fill certain gaps and if you're not there in the running game, then you're behind the blocks, and that's where some of the long runs can come. You're trying to make the right decision and right thing, what you've been coached to do, and that's easier obviously said than done.
For them, it's just they did a great job of misdirection runs and we just got caught out of place a couple times.
Q. And in terms of pre-snap communication?
COACH PEDERSON: That's a lot of communication. You're talking about liners to D-Line. You're talking about linebackers to safeties. It's everybody. It's between TJ and Nate, Gary, Rodney, Jalen, all those guys are communicating on every single play, again for coverage and also their run fits on defense.
Q. I understand the idea of not wanting Carson to press, but it also seems like he's missing on some routine throws, even when he's kept clean. What are the issues there right now?
COACH PEDERSON: Just missing. You know, I guess you can point to a lot of different things: Missing OTAs, not having all the necessary maybe reps during training camp, missing preseason games, whatever it might be, the timing of things that we do in the passing game and just missing these throws. They are throws that, you know, he typically would watch or would throw, and it's, you know, a little bit, too, on the receivers. Sometimes the receivers need to make the catches. So it's things that we have to continue to work.
Q. Kind of to the same vein about the communication with Carson, do you try to approach it any differently? Sometimes if you say the same thing but in a different way, it can get through to the person. Do you have to change anything or do you think about changing anything when you have those communications with him?
COACH PEDERSON: I think about a lot of things. I do think about the communication with Carson. I think about the communication with the team, being able to change those things up. I do think it's important that you change them up and approach it a little bit differently from the standpoint of -- my whole philosophy, too, is I don't always want to come across as an attack-style with players.
I want to have open, constructive dialogue and yet still be critical, right, and holding the player accountable, right, whether it's Carson or somebody on defense or whoever it might be. But having creative ways to kind of get my point across or at least to -- I want to be able to see him, let's say because we are talking about Carson, verbalize to me what you saw, right. And I see it a certain way and then he sees it a certain way and then we can have open dialogue that way and having constructive conversation, as opposed to me constantly or Press, or coming from an attack style because sometimes -- you don't want the resentment, right, especially quarterback and play caller. You want to have open dialogue and so I think about that all the time.
Q. Carson has probably never had back-to-back games like this at any level, high school, college. We know he hasn't on this level. How concerned are you about his mental state right now, just his confidence, just his ability to work himself out of this?
COACH PEDERSON: You know, I'm not concerned about that because of just who Carson is. I see his work ethic during the week. One way to get out of it is you've just got to continue to stay aggressive, right. Stay on the attack, and you know, I don't want anybody to go into a shell. That's no way to approach our business, our craft, our jobs, and for sure I don't want the quarterback position, in this case, Carson, to do that, as well. We just have to stay on the attack and we have to continue to work, so I'm not concerned about that at all.
Q. Not to belabor the point on Carson and the bad throws, but the things you mentioned about OTAs and training camp are true for everyone and most veteran quarterbacks under solid veteran coaches who have been together for a while are off to good starts this year. Is there something that you look back on that maybe you could have done differently getting ready for the season? What do you think of that?
COACH PEDERSON: I think we had a set of rules and protocols that we had and guidelines to go by, so many hours on the field, so many hours in the building and quite frankly, with a lot of new pieces, particularly in the skill position, with Jalen and John Hightower, even J.J., getting J.J. back out there, and Greg Ward, relatively new guys, you're talking about two and a half to three weeks of actual, full-speed timing throws.
I don't care who you are throwing. I don't care who the receivers are. Two and a half weeks to prepare for your first real game; it's not enough time. It's not enough time, and it's a constant work-in-progress and we continue to work, and I continue to -- I know you guys don't see it because you're not at practice much, but I continue to kind of restructure practice a little bit so we can spend more time during practice getting these throws and getting -- detailing the fundamentals of the route and the details of the route.
You know, look, when you put the film on and you watch these last couple of weeks, the mistakes we're making, yeah, they are devastating mistakes. I understand that. But there's a lot of good out there, too, and there's a lot of positive that we can build on and we're not far off. Our offensive line played well against another good front yesterday. Aaron Donald, you know, for the most part, wasn't around Carson. Maybe once or twice, but we kept him away from the quarterback. They played well. Our running game picked up yesterday. Miles did nice job yesterday in the run game, our tight ends blocking, all of that, and there's timing that goes along with that, as well.
The passing game is a little different, right. It takes some time. You know, we're going to continue to work and get better.
Q. How much input do you get from the front office when it comes to playing Jalen Hurts and do you feel any urgency or any pressure to incorporate him into the offense because he was a second round pick?
COACH PEDERSON: No and no.
Q. You guys have sort of fallen into a bit of a hole the last three seasons now. I'm just curious as the head coach, like mentally, is it a little bit exhausting to go to go through all of this again and deal with all of our questions, as well?
COACH PEDERSON: Dealing with your questions are exhausting, that's what's exhausting. Handling the wins and losses, that's a little bit easier than handling your questions.
But no, listen, obviously we get into -- this is a sport that I love. This is a sport I love to play it, and now I love to coach it. Obviously we get into this business to win, right, and obviously I've been hired here to win championships and to win games.
You know, listen, there's going to be setbacks, right. There's going to be things that don't go our way. But instead of just folding up our tents and going and doing something else, we're going to fight the fight, man. We're going to sit in here. We're going to grind this thing out. We're going to figure this thing out. I've got smart coaches. I've got smart players.
As I said, I think either this morning or after the game, I can't remember now, but those guys in that locker room are mad. They are upset that we are, you know, we're 0-2 and in this position. But nobody's going to feel sorry for the Philadelphia Eagles or feel sorry for me. I'm going to come here every day and take your questions. You may not like the answers, but I don't care, quite frankly, and what I care about is our team, right and getting our team prepared to play the Bengals this Sunday.
Q. I hope you care about this one, but you were talking about verbalizing things in the communication with Carson. So you take the interception to J.J., what did you see, and what would be sort of the coaching points on that throw? And is Isaac okay? Can you give us an update on him?
COACH PEDERSON: On that particular play, that one's unacceptable. That one is not part of the play. It's a back-side progression, obviously, and it's unfortunate. I've got to do a better job, offensively we have to do a better job with place of that nature; that we coach those a little bit bitter and the details of that particular route. It was a little bit of a new concept for us in the game plan this week and we've got to do a better job, but that one's unacceptable. Carson would say the same thing and we've got to own that one.
As far as Isaac goes, Isaac is going to miss some time. So the short-term IR, the couple weeks here for him, he's going to miss some time.
Q. What about maybe taking some pressure off Carson in the sense that you run the ball a little bit more or get him into situations where he can maybe get some passes, not that he can't complete them, but put him in situations where he can really move the offense?
COACH PEDERSON: That's a great idea. Yeah. I mean, outside of the two-minute drive before the half and at the end of the game when we were down, we had to throw. I thought we were pretty much running the ball extremely effectively. Carson was outside of the pocket being effective. The play-action pass was working. It's just a couple of plays that we'd like to have back, but other than that, I think it was 21-16 in the third quarter with a chance for us to go down and take the lead when we made that mistake.
But yeah, I mean, yeah, I guess we could do some things differently, yeah.
Q. The offensive line, a lot better it looked like this week. Did Jason Peters play better, would you say, when you looked at the tape, and how about Nate, did he settle in after his first start? And how did Matt Pryor do? That's a lot of questions.
COACH PEDERSON: Overall, you've heard me say the offensive line in general played well. They played better than the week before. JP, yeah, JP was improved. I think he kind of settled in at left tackle having a full week again, really two weeks of practice. Did a nice job.
Herbig played really well, and that's no small task blocking 99 and some of those guys on the D-Line, but he did a really nice job. Kelce did a nice job. Lane Johnson, it was great to get him back and he did a really good job, and then before Isaac got hurt, playing well.
Pryor came in and actually did some good things. It wasn't perfect. There were some calls that he missed and you could see he and Kelce kind of talking after plays, between plays, whatever, and again, that's just part of being a backup. But overall, those guys as you mentioned, played much better than the week before.
DraftScripts by ASAP Sports ....
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports