Doug Pederson confident he’ll return as Eagles head coach next season

The Philadelphia Eagles are about to put the finishing touches on their worst season since 2012 — a 37-17 loss to the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday afternoon not only eliminated them from playoff contention but guaranteed just a third season since 1998 in which they’ve won five games or fewer.

Jalen Hurts is human, after all, as a poor second half headlined the Eagles’ dreadful effort in Dallas, ending their playoff appearance streak at three straight years.

With one game remaining, they are 4-10-1 with the only satisfaction left to attain potentially being the spoiling of the Washington Football Team’s chances of winning the NFC East crown on Sunday.

Dreadful may be too nice a word to describe the Eagles’ season. Quarterback Carson Wentz was a shell of his former self, leading to his benching and the promotion of Hurts, thus creating a quarterback controversy that will carry well into the offseason.

The offensive line was shoddy and unreliable. The playmakers were missing in action and the defense was unreliable, to say the least.

Naturally, this all falls on the shoulders of head coach Doug Pederson, who could very well be on the hot seat after his team has gotten progressively worse since their improbable Super Bowl victory three years ago.

But he believes that his job is safe in Philadelphia.

“I feel fully confident to be the head coach of the Eagles in 2021,” Pederson told 94.1 WIP on Monday morning. “The thing I’m most proud of, this football team, we have been in the postseason three of the last five years since I’ve been here, and that’s pretty good. We have won a championship here. We have gone through a season where a lot of our veteran guys are not playing due to injury. We are playing with a lot of young players.

“There is always going to be evaluation in the offseason, and my job is evaluated as well. But I fully expect to be the coach next season, and I welcome the opportunity to get things right, get things fixed, and take this team into next season.”

The possibility exists that Pederson could be the scapegoat of general manager Howie Roseman’s inability to find the right talent to maintain the Eagles’ level of success stemming from 2017-2018, but the head coach helped lift the organization out of the doldrums experienced at the end of the Andy Reid era and the Chip Kelly regime.

Of course, it’s worth noting that the last time the Eagles won only four games in a season, it led to the firing of Reid.