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Bears HC candidate profile: Get to know Doug Pederson

Alyssa Barbieri
·3 min read
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The Chicago Bears fired head coach Matt Nagy after four years, and they’ve wasted no time exploring candidates to replace him.

Chairman George McCaskey, President/CEO Ted Phillips and Hall of Fame executive Bill Polian will conduct the search for Chicago’s next head coach, a process which McCaskey promised would be “thorough, diligent and exhausted.”

The Bears have cast a wide net of head coach candidates that they’ve extended interviews to, including former Philadelphia Eagles head coach Doug Pederson.

Let’s take a look at what Pederson brings to the table in our Bears head coach candidate profile:

Background

  • Current Job: N/A

  • Age: 53

  • Hometown: Bellingham, WA

  • College: Louisiana–Monroe

Experience

  • Head coach, Philadelphia Eagles (2016-20)

  • Offensive coordinator, Kansas City Chiefs (2013-15)

  • Quarterbacks coach, Philadelphia Eagles (2011-12)

  • Offensive quality control, Philadelphia Eagles (2009-10)

  • Head coach, Calvary Baptist Academy (2005-08)

Analysis

Immediately when you think of Pederson, credibility comes to mind after he led the Eagles to a Super Bowl championship in 2017. That’s the ultimate endgame and something the Bears have lacked for the last 36 years. Pederson coached the Eagles for four years before he was fired for refusing to make significant coaching changes in 2020. Following a year away from football, Pederson is ready to get back to coaching in the NFL.

While it’s easy to be skeptical about another coach from the Andy Reid coaching tree, Pederson is one of the few that has found success away from Reid, unlike former coach Matt Nagy. Pederson built some solid offenses both with Reid and on his own. He also got the most production out of quarterback Carson Wentz and current Bears quarterback Nick Foles. Granted, he had a nice coaching staff in place with Colts head coach Frank Reich and current Bears quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo. But Pederson was calling the plays.

But there are obvious concerns about his ability to develop a quarterback like Justin Fields. While Pederson was able to get the best out of Wentz, the same can’t be said when the Eagles drafted Jalen Hurts. Hurts struggled in his rookie year, although not to extent that Fields did under Nagy. This season, Hurts has taken a big leap in Year 2 under Nick Sirianni, which is the hope for Fields next season.

He said it...

“When you are organized, it’s a lot easier to be efficient. So being organized is big for me. You look around, my books are organized, my bottles of water are organized, my files are organized… I learned that from my dad, an Air Force guy. In our garage, he had all his tools hung up nice and neat. If we took a hammer out, he made sure we put it back.”

— Pederson (via SJ Magazine)

Bottom line

Pederson is one of the few coaching candidates with prior head coaching experience at the NFL level, which certainly has value. Especially considering Nagy struggled not only running the offense but as a head coach. You also can’t ignore the fact that he’s a Super Bowl-winning head coach, which is a big reason why Chicago deserved to at least hear him out.

But after winning the Super Bowl in 2017, things fell apart pretty quickly for the first-time head coach. There’s reason to be hesitant about bringing Pederson aboard, especially as the development of Fields remains one of the most important aspects of this job. The Bears are looking for a “leader-of-men” type of head coach. But following Pederson’s decision to pull Hurts in the finale, which prompted players to confront him, it’s not a glowing review in that regard.

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