Doug Pederson recalls decision to draft Jalen Hurts, how season ‘spiraled out of control’
By Keith Farner
Published:
Jalen Hurts will be tied to Doug Pederson and the Philadelphia Eagles for the rest of his career, and Pederson, even though he was fired in January.
Pederson is still answering questions about the Eagles’ decision to add quarterback Hurts in the second round of the 2020 NFL Draft and whether that was a key factor that torpedoed Philadelphia’s season.
The Eagles finished 4-11-1 record last season, which led to Pederson’s dismissal even though he guided Philadelphia to the NFL championship in the 2017 season. It also triggered the offseason trade of Carson Wentz, who had been the Eagles’ starting QB when healthy since entering the NFL as the second player picked in the 2016 draft.
“You go into drafts and you go into each year looking for quarterbacks,” Pederson said during an appearance on SiriusXM NFL Radio last week, per AL.com, “and we continued to look for quarterbacks. That’s always something that will never change. We won a Super Bowl with our backup quarterback, and we’ve had to play with our backup a couple of times in Philadelphia. And so we did that a year ago and brought in Jalen Hurts – not to undermine Carson Wentz, not to do anything to take his job or anything because Carson was definitely our starter. He was the franchise and all that moving forward. But someone that could come in and be the backup and learn how to play the NFL game. Bring his talent to the Philadelphia Eagles.”
Then he explained how the season “spiraled out of control” with injuries, turnovers and overall poor performance.
“It just became harder and harder as the year wore on. No one or no one person is to blame for any of what happened last year,” Pederson said. “It’s just unfortunate for me because I was really hoping to have an opportunity to fix the issues that we had and kind of get everything back on track whether it was going to be this year or next year, and, obviously, that didn’t happen, so I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the ifs, ands and buts. I just focus on the future and look forward to that.”
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
