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Murphy: Eagles' Pederson won't settle for playing it safe

LATE IN the second quarter of another expectation-shattering victory by the Eagles, there was a moment that exemplified the doctrine that Doug Pederson is establishing for himself.

Eagles head coach Doug Pederson.
Eagles head coach Doug Pederson.Read moreYong Kim / Staff Photographer

LATE IN the second quarter of another expectation-shattering victory by the Eagles, there was a moment that exemplified the doctrine that Doug Pederson is establishing for himself.

There were 15 seconds left before halftime, and the angel on the coach's shoulder was telling him to let well enough alone and kick the field goal. The Eagles had an 8-3 lead, with the ball on the Vikings' 17-yard line. In a game that had seen the two teams combine for six turnovers and 220 yards of total offense, pushing the margin to a touchdown and a two-point conversion would have given the Eagles a huge head start on the second half. While they still had time to take at least one more shot in the end zone, Pederson's decision to send out the field-goal unit was the safe play, given how the game had unfolded to that point.

Yet Pederson is not a man who lives for field goals, and even before the Vikings called a timeout to give Caleb Sturgis a few more moments to think his kick over, the coach seemed to be in the throes of an existential crisis. Jordan Matthews and Jason Kelce sprinted from the sideline onto the field as if somebody had told them Pederson had reconsidered and wanted the offense back out there. Then came the timeout, and the devil on Pederson's opposite shoulder had all the time it needed. The offense replaced the special teams, and Carson Wentz dropped back behind seven blockers and threw an our-ball-or-nobody's-ball into the end zone.

"The thinking there is obviously, there's about 15 seconds around the 15-yard line," Pederson said. "I did run the field-goal team out in time and then quickly just made the decision to pull them off, put the offense back up there, take one more shot. Max the protection. It's a two-man route. It's either a completion or it's an incomplete pass. You knock a few more seconds off the clock. I think five seconds came off. And then an opportunity to kick the field goal in that situation."

That the ensuing shot into the end zone fell incomplete is beside the point. However history comes to judge his tenure as Eagles coach, Pederson will not be known as a guy whose teams backed down. In Sunday's 21-10 win over a previously undefeated Vikings team, we saw it time and time again, both on a macro level and a micro level. To the first point, the Eagles were coming off the first hiccup in Pederson's tenure, with back-to-back losses on the road in Detroit and Washington, the latter of which saw them dominated in every phase of the game. After a 3-0 start, there was every reason to wonder whether the Eagles had been who we thought they were from the start of training camp. If they couldn't block the Redskins, or score against the Lions, how would they fare against a defense that had already shut down Aaron Rodgers and Cam Newton en route to a 5-0 start?

Turns out the logic was fair, and mostly airtight. The Eagles turned the ball over four times, gained just 239 yards of offense, and produced just one offensive touchdown. But the logic failed to account for the other part of the equation: No matter how many punches you throw, Pederson is going to keep firing. In the first quarter, he thumbed his nose at the conventional wisdom and took a point off the board, electing to go for two after the Vikings committed a penalty on a PAT that gave the Eagles the opportunity to take another play from the 1-yard line.

Pederson later described the decision as a "no-brainer," something that it most definitely wasn't, because if the two-point attempt had failed, the Eagles would lead by a field goal instead of a touchdown, a significant fact in what seemed destined to be a low-scoring game. An 8-3 score instead of a 7-3 score was good for the guys who bet the Eagles at +2.5, but the risk incurred in going for it seemed considerably greater than the chances that a successful conversion would pay dividends.

"That's a good football team and a team that's been scoring some points," Pederson said. "So we felt at that time just take advantage of that and go for two."

For all the mathematical failings of that rationale, it fits with the overall persona Pederson is carving out for his team. And when you see the players respond to him the way they did on Sunday, it's difficult to quibble over any part of his method.

"I've got a lot of trust in our guys," he said. "If you don't work those situations in practice and talk about those situations, yeah, negative things could happen, but I just felt totally, 100 percent confident in our guys to execute that play."

On a couple of occasions during his postgame press conference, Pederson invoked the sport of boxing as a parallel to what we saw throughout the game. Perhaps that's the doctrine. Hit the other guy where he least wants to be hit. He'd rather you settle for the PAT and the field goal, wouldn't he? He'd rather you punt on fourth-and-2, wouldn't he? He'd rather you drop into coverage instead of sending the blitz, wouldn't he?

"Listen, this is a team that for two weeks in a row kind of got their lip bloodied a little bit," Pederson said.

Against the Vikings, they took some more punishment. But they never stopped dishing it out.

@ByDavidMurphy

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