Donnellon: Doug Pederson still defining who he is

DOUG PEDERSON stepped up to the microphone at the NovaCare Complex on Tuesday with a couple of pages ripped from the Andy Reid playbook. First he ducked the most anticipated answer of the day, the apparent timeline discrepancy over Lane Johnson's account of when he informed team officials of his PED violation and when the coach learned of it. Then, in addressing the trade for Dorial Green-Beckham, a talented athlete with a troubled past, he conjured the man most responsible for his current position, pointing out that Reid gave Michael Vick a second chance, and the Eagles have Jalen Mills on their roster right now.

"You just go down the list," Pederson said. "We all have faults. We all have things in our past that are going to come back at some point. But you know what? We learn from them, we move on and we make better men out of these guys. This is a great opportunity, not only for (Green-Beckham), but for us as a staff to show that."

As for the 10-day gap between when Johnson said he told the Eagles he bombed the drug test and when the coach said he learned? Well, Andy would never have put himself in that spot, something Pederson now apparently gets. "Until I get further notice from the National Football League, it's a moot point in my case," he said. "I'm not going to talk anymore about it."

So call it a mulligan and assume this is one of those white lies he was more or less forced into by the player's continued candor - candor that, if Pederson continues to emulate Reid, he will preventively quash in future cases like it.

Really, that's the challenge for Pederson: defining who he is, and who he is not; defining what he will do, and what he won't. He began the job promising to be his own man with his own style, and his hire was based partially, according to owner Jeffrey Lurie, on "emotional intelligence" - a direct dig at former coach Chip Kelly's reputation as aloof and incommunicative with both players and administrators, including Lurie.

That's what they're still selling, less than a month away from when the games count and the offensive line he and general manager Howie Roseman continue to claim they are excited about is tasked with executing Pederson's more traditional approach.

"His passion and willingness to teach and to talk to players and communicate with everyone in the building has been great," Roseman said Tuesday when I asked what he thought of his first-year coach so far. "To steal a Bill Parcells line, there's always going to be things that come on your desk that you hadn't anticipated when the day started. That's just the nature of the job, and he's done a great job having a steady hand during those times . . . ''

In explaining the trade for Green-Beckham, Roseman said this too - an insight, I thought, that the brass is expecting about the same thing I am from this season:

"For us and where we are in our development, we thought it was a risk worth taking . . . we also felt, because of where we are from a (draft) pick standpoint going forward that we're going to have to take some chances to increase the talent level."

Here's the risk to the risk, though: It can sabotage Pederson's opportunity to establish who he is as a head coach. He seems to have embraced that image as the anti-Kelly, beginning his press conference Tuesday by thanking all the steam-fried fans who came out to watch his first training camp as big boss, expressing a willingness to forgo the rigid adherence to team "culture" if the flawed talent is big enough to warrant it.

But here's the thing: Reid was more like Kelly at first, showing little tolerance for the flawed-but-talented, clearly establishing what it took to be an "Andy-Reid type player" before deviating from that somewhat during the second half of his 14-year run as Eagles head coach. People tend to forget that even Terrell Owens toed the line at first. And that Reid's tolerance increased as the team's successes decreased.

So what's the right approach here for a first-year head coach tasked with building a team that can achieve and sustain long-term success in coming seasons? Do you plant your flag and set it in concrete, or drive it a few feet into pliable sand?

Pederson said several times Tuesday that "we're not in the business of trying to rehabilitate anybody." But moments after calling the trade for Green-Beckham an "organizational decision" to upgrade the team's talent level, Roseman announced that Eagles great Brian Dawkins had been hired full time with a title he couldn't quite remember. "Football operations executive," Roseman finally blurted. "And he's going to help in player development."

Starting with, presumably, Green-Beckham, whose inconsistencies on the field and a perceived lack of intensity triggered his exit from Tennessee more than any off-field events.

Bad cop, Dawkins. Good cop, Coach. As Pederson noted, Vick re-imaged himself in most eyes while here. T.O., not so much. Both, though, came long after the head coach had set his flag.

Less than a month shy of his debut, Doug Pederson's flag still seems to be looking for the right spot. And he seems to have decided, at least for now, to leave it in sand and not fasten it in stone.

@samdonnellon

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