Nate Sudfeld: Doug Pederson explains the benching Jalen Hurts

Everyone knows that this is not true

The 256th game of the NFL season, played in prime time on NBC, is usually a great aperitif for the playoffs. Last year, the 49ers won the Seahawks at Sunday Night Football showcase to beat NFC West and gain the advantage of playing at home in the playoffs. This year, he left everyone watching with a bitter taste in his mouth.

The Giants, having defeated the Cowboys earlier in the day, just needed the Eagles to beat Washington to be crowned champions of the NFC East. Washington played as a team that knew it was on the brink of the postseason. Eagles players also played hard, but their coach did not.

Early in the fourth period, Doug Pederson gave Jalen Hurts the hook and put third career striker Nate Sudfeld into the game as a defender. Sudfeld was terrible and the Eagles lost without resisting.

After the game, Pederson explained his decision.

“Yes, I was training to win,” said Pederson. “Yes, that decision was mine alone. Nate has obviously been here for four years and I felt like he deserved an opportunity to take some pictures.

“Listen, if there’s anything out there that thinks I wasn’t trying to win the game, [Zach] Ertz is outside, Brandon Graham is there, Darius Slay is there. All of our best guys are still on the pitch at the end. We were going to win the game. “

The charitable interpretation of this quote is that Pederson thought he could give Sudfeld a chance to play while trying to win the game. Everything the national TV audience saw from Sudfeld should make it clear that there was no way that could be true. The game ended the moment Sudfeld entered the field. Pederson is right: the two stars who were not inactive remained in the game, but in the most important position on the field, the Eagles were playing against a guy who looked as ineffective and defeated as the Cowboys QB Ben DiNucci against Philadelphia earlier this season.

The uncharitable interpretation is that Pederson was lying to hell when he said the Eagles were trying to win the game. Pederson may point to the presence of Ertz, Graham and Slay as evidence that he has not given up on the game entirely, but there is simply no way to reconcile this with his decision to put Sudfeld in charge of the crime. Even though Hurts easily played his worst game of the season, it is ridiculous to suggest that the Eagles had a better chance of winning with him on the bench.

Pederson added on Monday morning that he was also trying to assess some of the players further down the depth chart.

If assessing the future of the Eagles’ defenders was the goal, then Hurts should have played the whole game. The biggest decision the team will have to make in this off-season is whether Hurts will remain in the starting lineup and make Carson Wentz the most expensive reserve in the league. Each additional snap Hurts gives – especially in a game in which he fought against an elite defensive line – helps make that decision easier.

This is also not a college, where a benchwarmer gets some action in the final game of the season as a reward for working over the years. Unless you are a playoff team unable to improve your ranking, players want to win every game in the regular season. The only other time that Sudfeld saw extended gameplay was in the final game of the 2017 season, when the 13–2 Eagles rested Nick Foles against the Cowboys after having already won the home advantage.

Players and fans of the giants (including me) are understandably upset because the Eagles’ lack of effort ended up deciding the division race. (The Giants could also have taken their fate out of the Eagles’ hands by winning more than six games.) Fans of 30 other non-Washington NFL teams should also be upset because the Eagles turned the game into a mockery, and that Pederson had the audacity to claim that it was not a scam.

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Everyone knows that this is not true

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