Former Giants head coach Ben McAdoo drew the ire of Eagles fans Thursday when he broke his silence in the New York Post and took a shot at the world champs.
While McAdoo had plenty of targets, he openly doubted the Eagles would be able to handle their success, while also picking the Giants to win the NFC East in 2018 (see story).
Those comments made their way back to Doug Pederson and today, the Eagles’ head coach responded to them on NBC Sports Philadelphia’s Philly Sports Talk.
I think there’s a point there. I mean, quite honestly, complacency can set in. You can skip an OTA, you can maybe skip a workout or whatever. But what I saw from our players was not that. Our players showed up for OTAs, they spent time getting themselves ready.
I did my part to help take care of the veteran players who played a ton of snaps last fall. And our guys have kind of moved on from last season. They’re looking forward to this season. And it is my job to make sure they don’t get complacent and we stay hungry and there is an edge. And we’re going to get everybody’s best each week and that’s what we want. I think anybody that plays on Sunday wants to play the best.
So now we’ve got the targets on our backs and we’re going to embrace that and get ready this training camp and we are going to try to defend. But at the same time, we’re going to take it one week at a time and build the season just like we did last year.
Of course, this isn’t the first time Pederson has mentioned this and McAdoo certainly wasn’t the first to wonder about possible complacency. It’s a valid argument and it would probably mean more if it didn’t come from a coach who got fired midseason last year.
But Pederson’s big message to his team and to anyone who would listen this spring was about the “new norm.” The whole idea behind it is to make sure that the Eagles aren’t a one-and-done. For the Eagles, it’s about sustaining that success. So we don’t know how they’ll handle it, but they certainly didn’t need an unemployed coach to remind them.