Remember when Chip Kelly was revolutionizing the NFL? The 1st half of his first game was something straight out of a Hollywood movie. Remember when Todd Bowles looked like a great coach last year? Remember when Gus Bradley was coveted by teams? Remember when Jimmy Johnson went 1-15 and the entire NFL laughed at him as Joe College in way over his head?

You need time to evaluate a coach. A big part of being a good coach is being able to sustain success. Ray Rhodes motivated the heck out of his 1995 and 1996 teams, but that wasn’t sustainable. You can only go to that well so often. Good teams play smart and execute well. Trying to “get up” for every game is something that might work at the high school or college level. Not in the NFL.

A good coach installs offensive and defensive systems and then finds and develops players for them. If a coach is lucky enough to inherit the right players, he can win right away. Other coaches have to completely rebuild. Pederson was somewhere in the middle. With Sam Bradford, I thought the Eagles would go 9-7 or something like that. When they dealt him and went with Carson Wentz, I thought this would be more like a 6 or 7 win team. Rookie QBs are going to have some long days. Remember that Peyton Manning had a HOF runner (Marshall Faulk) and a HOF receiver (Marvin Harrison) and he still went 3-13 as a rookie. He lost 3 games by 23 or more points.

The popular talking point right now is to question if the Eagles have gotten better. They started 3-0 and have gone 2-7 since. Based on that, no the team isn’t better. But I think that is being short-sighted. The 3-0 start was a time when the Eagles were healthy and things were going well.

Lane Johnson was the RT and playing at a high level. Allen Barbre was the LG and playing well. The OL had good chemistry.

Ron Brooks was the nickelback. That let Malcolm Jenkins sit back and play S.

Josh Huff was the KOR and part of the receiving corps.

Nelson Agholor’s confidence hadn’t fallen apart. Remember he had that great TD in the opener that got us all excited.

Bennie Logan was healthy and playing really well. He was dominant at times vs PIT.

What you saw in the 3-0 start is how well this team could play when they were healthy and things were going well. What you’re seeing now is how this team looks when it is struggling. Andy Reid was 3-11 in his first 14 games. There were some close losses, but a few stinkers as well. That team won the final 2 games and offered promise for the future.

This team could get hot any week now. The Packers lost 4 in a row and have won their last 2. The Bengals were a 3-win team that played great on Sunday. You never know when a team is going to snap out of its funk and play well. That could happen Sunday or the Eagles might not win another game. We’ll just have to wait and see how things play out.

Some individual players have improved. Several rookies have impressed. Halapoulivaati Vaitai has shown that he could be the RT of the future. Isaac Seumalo showed promise in his start and has been an effective role player. Wendell Smallwood looks like a good RB. Trey Burton is playing the best football of his career. Mychal Kendricks has turned things around this year and is playing better. Jason Kelce is playing his best football of the year in the last few weeks.

There is no question that the overall team is in a funk right now. I just think we have to be careful about falling into the trap of thinking this definitively means Pederson can’t coach and needs to be replaced. We give rookie players the chance to learn from their mistakes and develop, but we seem to think that rookie coaches should know exactly what they’re doing.

Being an NFL coach is hard. You need the right players. You need the right assistants. And a little luck doesn’t hurt. Doug Pederson hasn’t had a whole lot of luck this year. He’s had to deal with suspensions, arrests, injuries, a poorly timed bye week, facing teams coming off a bye, etc. This has not been anything close to a normal season. Pederson has had good moments and given us all hope that he can be a good coach. He’s also had some bad moments and made us all wonder if he’s in over his head.

The next month will give us some clues, but we’re not really going to have a strong feel for Pederson’s ability until at least the middle of 2017. At that point we’ll have seen enough to have an idea if he is the answer or not.

_