After Sunday’s season finale against the Cowboys finished up, head coach Doug Pederson revealed a little bit of news.
He’ll be calling the offensive plays again in 2017.
“I will, yes,” he said. “I will for sure.”
This past season was the first for Pederson as a full-time play-caller. He was given some play-calling responsibility in Kansas City in 2015 with Andy Reid, but wasn’t the only guy. In his first year as head coach, it was pretty much all on him, although he made sure to point out on Sunday that he had plenty of help.
And before the season started, Pederson changed his first convoluted system for getting the play calls into Wentz, which would have gone from him to offensive coordinator Frank Reich and then to Wentz. Pederson was confused by the number of channels he would be allowed on his headset.
Once he was set straight, Pederson streamlined the process and called the plays directly into Wentz himself, which seemed to work. That’s the way the Eagles plan on doing things going forward.
Wentz thought Pederson’s play-calling and his approach to play-calling was similar all year. But that wasn’t what he really liked about Pederson’s play-calling.
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“One thing I always appreciated with Coach Pederson was he valued my input, even as a rookie,” Wentz said. “He valued my opinion on things. I thought that was awesome, I thought that was awesome for me. And I thought he did a good job.”
While Wentz thought Pederson did a good job calling the plays during the 2016 season, fans weren’t so forgiving. At times, Pederson’s calls were brought into question.
But he was pretty consistent throughout the year, remaining very aggressive.
“Again, as I mentioned during the week, I'll evaluate my play-calling,” Pederson said Sunday. “I've got to balance between managing the game offense, defense, special teams to actually calling the offense. I get a lot of help. It's not like I'm doing this by myself. Frank has done a great job with me. He's constantly in my ear. He's constantly throwing ideas.
“(Offensive line coach) Jeff Stoutland is constantly throwing the run game at me, so it's not like I'm doing this by myself. I've got a great staff on offense, and we're constantly dialoguing. Even though I'm the one calling the actual play, there's a lot of dialogue on the sideline as to what we need to be calling.”