Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie decided it was best for the Eagles to move on without Doug Pederson as their head coach on Monday and said in a statement that a discussion about their “collective vision” was the impetus for the move.
At a press conference, Lurie expanded on where that discussion led him to let go of a coach who won a Super Bowl a few years ago. Lurie said the team embraced “short-term decision-making” to try to get another championship, but now finds itself in a “real transition period” with an aging, expensive roster that produced a 4-11-1 record in 2020.
Lurie said that his goal is to get back to “what we’re used to in the next two, three, four, five years” while Pederson’s focus was more on the present.
“I would say the difference in vision is much more about where we’re at as a franchise,” Lurie said. “As I said, we’re at that point. It’s a transition point and we’ve got to get younger and we have to have a lot more volume of draft picks and we have to accumulate as much talent as we possibly can that is going to work in the long run with a focus on the mid-term and the long term and not on how to maximize 2021. And it’s almost not fair to Doug, because his vision has to be: what can I do to fix this right away and what coaches can I have that can help me get to a smoother 2021?”
General Manager Howie Roseman’s recent drafts have been blamed by many for the lack of ascending players on the roster who would allow the team to compete in the short term as well as build for years to come. Lurie said his confidence in Roseman remains strong and the results of that bet will determine how long the transition will take in Philadelphia.