The Philadelphia Eagles and their quarterback Carson Wentz have been under fire from national and local media for poor play that has led the team to an 0-2 start to the season. Some media outlets have said that Eagles’ head coach Doug Pederson has become “snarky” in his press conference answers addressing the team’s recent struggles, but Doug Gottlieb disagrees.
The Fox Sports Radio host defended Pederson’s answer, to a question from Jimmy Kempski of the Philly Voice, saying the first part of the question was a statement and the second part contained the trigger word “layups”.
Below is the transcript of Kempski’s question and Pederson’s answer:
KEMPSKI: Hey, Doug. Carson had great protection all day, he wasn’t sacked, and I think he only got knocked down once. I know you were asked Monday why he’s missing throws, and it’s an assortment of reasons. But some of the throws he’s missing are sort of like layups. What could be the reason for some of those easier misses that he’s missing?
PEDERSON: Have you played quarterback in the National Football League?
KEMPSKI: I have not, Doug.
PEDERSON: Okay. They’re not layups. There ain’t a throw out here that’s a layup. And so some of it is just timing with young guys. Some of it is just Carson being not accurate at that particular time. It could be that there’s a defensive guy that flashed a hand, and he’s got to change his arm angle in a split second. There’s all kinds of reasons for accuracy, and these are things we continue to work on, and will continue to work on for the entire season.
“First, I thought it was a spectacular answer,” Gottlieb said on Wednesday’s edition of The Doug Gottlieb Show. “You may think that it is a cop out, that he is just protecting his quarterback. That’s true, but the question was not just bad. it was terrible”
Gottlieb then offers an explanation as to why.
“The first part, the reporter was not asking a question. The reporter was making a statement of fact. That’s not his job. His first question could have been, ‘What did you think of the protection Sunday for Carson Wentz?’ Let Doug Pederson say that the protection was outstanding. Then just follow up with ‘considering what you just said, why do you think Carson is missing some of those throws?’ But instead the question puts it (the blame) all on the quarterback.”
Gottlieb also takes exception to the word “layups”.
“You use the word layup because that’s the easiest shot in basketball,” Gottlieb said. “Unless a seven-foot shot-blocking condor is trying to block your shot or LeBron James is chasing you down from behind… or you go up to dunk it and the ball slips out of your hand. The point is it may look like a layup to you because you get to press pause and see a nice clean pocket, but you don’t know exactly what happened. What you can’t do is make a statement and then use a trigger word like layup.”
Gottlieb adds that these types of questions stem from the game seeming easy in different formats, but that playing quarterback in the NFL is difficult.
“When you play Madden, you read the defense, you see a receiver, you push a button and boop, you make the play. You watch all these breakdowns and you’re like ‘oh, this is easy’.
Ok then now it’s 3rd & 7 (in real life). You think you see one thing. The wide receiver runs a slightly different route. You haven’t been playing well. You change your arm angle to fit it through a window and you have been off all day and all of a sudden it snowballs on you. Now Doug Pederson’s answer is going to be played all over and it’s going to sound like a D-Bag answer because it sounds like I played and you didn’t. In reality, all he is doing is answering the trigger word and the position that the line had nothing to do with it because Carson had a clean pocket all day.”
