To suggest Doug Pederson is unhappy with his team's performance in Sunday's double-digit loss to division rival New York Giants would be a massive understatement.
The Philadelphia Eagles coach joined 94WIP's Angelo Cataldi on Monday morning and was hot about the 27-17 loss.
"I'm pissed off, Angelo," Pederson said, . "I'm pissed off at myself. I'm pissed off at the way we played. It frustrates me to no end. We have too much pride, I have too much pride. These players have too much pride. We work our ass off during the week. It is frustrating. It is frustrating. Blame it on me all you want. I'll handle it with the players, you can blame it on me. I'm a big guy. It's fine. We're self-inflicted ourselves. We are killing ourselves. We are shooting ourselves in the foot. All of those cliche little statements are still showing up and it's frustrating."
The Eagles were inefficient on offense and couldn't stop the Giants' attack at key moments late after Philly closed the gap to four-points late in the third quarter. It's one thing to lose to a division foe, it's quite another to spin your tires in sinking mud.
Pederson said it's the most frustrated he's been after a loss.
"Without a doubt," Pederson said. "Without a doubt. Without getting into what we do here during the week, because I just don't like to give all that information out. But there's things we talk about as a team, things we talk about as coaches with our players during the week about how these games are going to be, how these games are going to play out. I mean it's almost like you can sit here with a crystal ball on a Monday and say, you know exactly how the Giants are going to play. You just know that. It's NFC East. You just know. That's what frustrating, being able to explain that during the week and even have the players understand and even communicate that back. And then to go out and play like we did is very frustrating. I am frustrated and I'm pissed off."
Pederson pointed to the 11 penalties for 74 yards and going 0-for-9 on third downs as critical reasons for the loss. Carson Wentz was also sacked three times, was hit a whopping 13 times and completed just 56 percent of his 37 pass attempts.
"I look at a lot of different things," Pederson said on what went wrong. "Number one, I look at 11 penalties. Let's just start there. Let's start with 11 penalties, whether we agree with them or not there's 11 penalties. Let's start with 0-for-9 on third down, let's look at that. Penalties are discipline things. Third down are execution things and also play calling things. And when I look at this tape today that's exactly what jumps off on the screen. I'm not going to sit here and make excuses and say we've got young players, no. That's over. We're 10 weeks into this thing."
Despite the bad loss, the Eagles remain atop the pitiful NFC East division. One likely reason Pederson is upset is that his team blew a chance to gain distance in the division before a very difficult stretch of games. Philly's next five contests are against Cleveland (6-3), Seattle (6-3), Green Bay (7-2), New Orleans (7-2) and Arizona (6-3). Things could get darker in Philadelphia before Christmas.
