Hindsight is always 20/20, isn’t it?
Philadelphia Eagles head coach Doug Pederson shouldered the blame for his team’s 30-28 loss to the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday afternoon, telling 94WIP Radio on Monday morning that he should’ve called a timeout before their final two-point-conversion attempt.
Just inside the two-minute warning, the Eagles were poised to overturn a 16-point fourth-quarter deficit when quarterback Carson Wentz’s one-yard keeper brought Philadelphia to within two points.
Rather than use their final timeout to pick the perfect play, Pederson sent out the offense under the direction of a draw option run.
With the Ravens’ defense stacking the line of scrimmage, Wentz opted to keep it himself and was quickly met in the backfield where the Eagles’ hopes of at least overtime were squashed.
“I look back on it today and I believe I still had the timeout in that situation,” Pederson said. “I think that maybe the best call could have been the timeout to really think things through or at least give us more time, from a coaching standpoint, to make a better decision at that time.”
Pederson noted that Wentz did have the authority to call a timeout if needed, or if he recognized that the Eagles’ offense was in the middle of an unfavorable matchup. But that never happened.
“But I don’t expect him to really … it’s our job to put our players in a position to be successful or at least have an attempt to be successful,” Pederson said. “Obviously, the quarterback and head coach are the two guys who can do that. That falls on me to run down there and do that.”
It’s not as though the Eagles were rushed into that final sequence of plays. Wentz’s touchdown came on the first play after the two-minute warning, which should have provided ample time to come up with the best possible play combination to knot things up.
Instead, the Eagles are 1-4-1 through six games and are just a half-game in front of the lowly New York Giants and Washington Football Team in the NFC East.
