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Doug Pederson: Eagles didn’t draft Jalen Hurts to undermine Carson Wentz

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Chris Simms explains why Carson Wentz came in at No. 18 in his latest QB rankings and how he can turn it all around in Indianapolis.

Things ended badly for the 2020 Eagles.

That much is clear after the club finished 4-11-1, fired head coach Doug Pederson, and traded away quarterback Carson Wentz to the Colts.

Pederson recently made it clear in a radio appearance that he would like to coach again. But in a separate interview, he detailed what he saw going wrong with Philadelphia last season after the club drafted Jalen Hurts in the second round.

“You go into drafts and you go into each year looking for quarterbacks,” Pederson said during an appearance on SiriusXM NFL Radio. “And we continued to look for quarterbacks, and that’s always something that will never change. We won a Super Bowl with our backup quarterback. And we’ve had to play with our backups a couple of times in Philadelphia. So we did that a year ago and brought in Jalen Hurts — not to undermine Carson Wentz, not to do anything to take away his job or anything because Carson was our starter. He was the franchise and all that moving forward. But [we wanted] someone that could come in and could be the backup and learn how to play the NFL game — bring his talent to the Philadelphia Eagles.

“And really as the season began, things just started to kind of I guess spiral out of control. Injuries began to set in. We weren’t playing very well. Turnovers offensively, just a number of things, penalties, more injuries compounded problems, and it just became harder and harder as the year wore on. No one person is to blame for any of what happened last year. And it’s just unfortunate for me because I was hoping to really have an opportunity to fix the issues that we had and kind of get everything back on track — whether it be this year or the next year. And, obviously, that didn’t happen. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the ifs, ands, and buts. I just focus on the future and look forward to that.”

Pederson led the Eagles to victory over the Patriots in Super Bowl LII and added that if he gets an opportunity to be a head coach again, he’ll take those positive experiences with him.

“I look back on my time and there are a lot of positives I take from it,” Pederson said. “But I’m not going to dwell too much on the past.”