Reported details highlight differences between Lurie and Pederson

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Doug Pederson and Jeff Lurie are meeting on Monday in South Florida to determine the future of the organization after a meeting last Tuesday that apparently did not go well.

One of the biggest reported differences between the owner and head coach was about Pederson’s coaching staff moving forward. We heard that Pederson not only wanted to keep Press Taylor, but also wanted to promote him.

Apparently it goes deeper than that based on this report from the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Jeff McLane:

So there’s a lot there. In each case, you can see why Pederson would want to make those moves; he’s a loyal guy.

But you can also see why Lurie heard all those suggestions after a 4-11-1 season and thought, “You gotta be kidding me. That’s your plan!?”

McLane says Lurie was underwhelmed. Yeah, I get that.

The Eagles always say the coaching staff is left up to the head coach but that clearly hasn’t been the case in Philadelphia. It wasn’t the case when they hired Pederson and “helped” him build that first staff and it wasn’t the case last offseason when the organization moved on from Mike Groh and Carson Walch the day after Pederson said those two would be returning.

Maybe there’s a compromise in there. Maybe Doug can get his way on some of those names and cave on others. But it feels like a lot of the damage is done. Pederson is now in a situation where everyone knows the owner was at least thinking of firing him and if Pederson is back, everyone will know that he’s back with a coaching staff that isn’t really his.

Lurie isn’t really giving Pederson an opportunity to create his own coaching staff. But in fairness to Lurie, those changes aren’t exactly blowing anyone away.

Lurie wants the Eagles to bring in top assistants and Pederson wants to run it back.

According to that report, Pederson’s big moves would be to promote the QBs coach who oversaw one of the worst QB regressions we’ve ever witnessed, replace the DC with an internal candidate or a quasi internal candidate and keep a special teams coordinator whose units have regressed for several seasons.

All of this, of course, glosses over the fact that the Eagles’ biggest problem is the lack of talent. That stems directly from repeated failure in the draft. A talented roster can cover a lot up. But that might not matter right now.

It looks like if Pederson is going to get fired, it’ll be in large part because he’s too loyal to his assistants. And if he’s back, it’ll probably be because he caved.

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