Doug Pederson: Cowboys Have Our Number

Eagles coach has viewed tape of the team's losses during four-game losing streak and has found a couple of themes he hope can be reversed on Sunday

The Eagles under coach Doug Pederson have owned the New York Giants and Washington Redskins.

When it comes to the Dallas Cowboys, though, it’s a vastly different story for Pederson.

Pederson has a 2-5 record against that other team in the NFC East, and now he must figure out a way to make sure that record doesn’t get any worse on Sunday, when the Cowboys visit Lincoln Financial Field for a 4:25 p.m. kickoff.

Dallas is seeking its third division title since Pederson was hired in 2016. With a win on Sunday, the Cowboys will have achieved that.

“The start of the season every team in the National Football League says the same thing, every head coach gets up and says, ‘Hey, lets’ take care of our division,’” said Pederson, who has been lights out against the Giants (7-1) and Redskins (6-2), on Friday.

“You win your division, you’re in the postseason and the Cowboys have been a team we’ve struggled with. It’s something we just gotta continue to work and try to overcome. They’ve had our number here, recently and really since my team here in Philly.”

Pederson said he has reviewed tape of previous games against the Cowboys and cited slow starts and turnovers as the Eagles’ undoing, especially during the current four-game losing streak.

Throw out the meaningless regular-season finale in 2017, in which the Eagles rested their starters after securing the number one seed in the playoffs and lost 6-0, and the Eagles have trailed at halftime in all three of the other losses.

They were down 13-3 at halftime in the first meeting in 2018, 6-0 in the second meeting that year, and 27-7 earlier this year.

The Eagles had four turnovers in the first meeting this season and one in each of the previous two defeats.

“I look back to our first game, again the turnovers early in that football game, really cost us big then we were playing from behind,” said Pederson “Even some of the games that we’ve watched again this week from last year and even the year before. We got down early in these games and it’s something that we try to put an emphasis on, best we can.

“We have to stop the run, we understand that, try to slow them down and the offensively we’ve got to start fast, we have to put points on the board then try to sustain that and maintain that throughout the course of the game.”

Left unsaid is that the Eagles did come back to tie the game in the second half during two of the three losses but couldn’t forge ahead to stay.

“It’s something as we look at the tape and how I prepare the football team and get ready to play and all of that I look at all of that, but at the end of the day we’re focused on this game, one game, and hopefully we can turn things around.

“We do well with the other teams, it’s just his one team that kind of has our number right now.”

That number needs to change beginning Sunday, otherwise the Eagles will head to New York next week with nothing left to play for except pride.