The Philadelphia Eagles announced on Thursday of last week that they had completed their head coaching search. At that time they did not announce who their head coach would be, a clear indication that whoever they had chosen was a staff member on a team still vying for ultimate victory in the NFL playoffs. On the same day, league sources indicated to, well, everyone that Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Doug Pederson was the Eagles' guy.
On Monday after Pederson and the Chiefs' playoff ousting at the hands of the New England Patriots, the Eagles made what was already well-known throughout the football world, official. It's not abnormal for teams to hire coordinators or assistants on team's still alive in the postseason - in fact, it's pretty much par for the course at this point. But the way in which the Eagles went about things with Pederson apparently has some in and around the league upset and wondering whether the move became a distraction for the then-Chiefs OC.
"Although the Chiefs aren't complaining about it, other teams are grumbling because of the precedent it is setting," Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk reported late Tuesday. "As one source with a team other than the Chiefs told PFT, Pederson's awareness that he would be getting the job necessarily became a distraction as he prepared for a playoff game."
The Chiefs wound up losing to the Pats 27-20 in a game that wasn't as close as the score suggested. The Chiefs offense wasn't able to move the ball consistently against the New England defense thanks in large part to a hobbled Jeremy Maclin, and in the end, with the final minutes ticking off the clock, quarterback Alex Smith couldn't rally the troops for a quick enough score to tie the game.
Pederson doesn't call the plays the majority of the time for the Chiefs and it's not the first time an Andy Reid-coached team has fallen short during crunch time of an important game, so Pederson's focus may not be a point of contention here. There's also the fact that the Chiefs defense, so staunch during the regular season, couldn't limit the Pats and Tom Brady when they needed a stop.
But it seems fair to wonder, as Florio and his sources do, whether Pederson's not-so-secret promotion with the Eagles necessarily affected his preparation for the game - trying to put together a staff, selling his house, considering free agents and trades and the draft during the week leading up to an important playoff game does seem as though it would take time away from watching tape and game-planning.
But there's also no way of knowing if it did distract Pederson.
In the end, Florio's source indicated that the league would like the issue to be ignored because of concerns that it makes it look "toothless and incompetent," which wouldn't be the first time an issue has caused Roger Goodell and Co. to look that way, so nothing is ultimately to come of it in all likelihood.
But if teams continue to do this and the league does nothing, it's almost certain to become an issue at some point, whether this offseason, or sometime in the near future.
