Long before he coached the Eagles, Doug Pederson was a journeyman backup passer who spent years in Green Bay playing behind Brett Favre.
That thrilling Packers team made back-to-back trips to the Super Bowl in 1996 and 1997, but Pederson recently went out on a limb to call his current Eagles roster the more talented bunch.
"I look back at my time in Green Bay as a player when we were making those playoff runs and those Super Bowl runs there, and do we have as much talent on this team than we did then? We probably have more talent, right?" Pederson said in June, per Tim McManus of ESPN.
"But we also had a lot of talent in here (in Philadelphia in 2011) and where did that get us? So there's got to be a combination of blending all this talent with the coaching staff, with my ideas and philosophy, to bring that all together, put the egos aside, put pride aside, and just go focus on winning this game that we have in front of us. I'm a big believer (that) if you do that, then you look back at the end of the season and you're probably going to be where you want to be, and that's playing in the postseason."
The Eagles used this offseason to bolster the offense with a handful of accomplished veterans -- running back LeGarrette Blount along with wideouts Alshon Jeffery and Torrey Smith -- while adding first-round pass rusher Derek Barnett to a defense already boasting Fletcher Cox and Brandon Graham.
"If we win eight, go 8-8, is that a successful year? No. ... I don't coach to be average, I'll tell you that," Pederson said. "These players don't practice the way they do to be average. We're all in this together, and we'll just continue to work every single day till we get to that goal."
