The Eagles announced on Monday that quarterback Carson Wentz will start against the Colts in Week Three after getting cleared for contact for the first time since last season’s knee injury.
During his press conference, head coach Doug Pederson was asked if he would be tempering any of the aggressiveness he showed before Wentz was hurt and while Nick Foles was in the starting lineup because Wentz has been out of action for nine months. Pederson said he expected it to take a bit of time for Wentz to readjust to game speed, but that he sees “no need to hold back” in terms of his playcalling.
“Think about the game yesterday,” Pederson said, via a transcript of his press conference. “How many times did Nick get hit? It’s part of the game. The thing is I’m not going to coach scared. I’m not going to coach paranoid. I’m not going to go in thinking, ‘Oh no, we can’t do ‘this’, we can’t do ‘that’.’ We just have to continue to go play and I [have] to coach that way. That’s where the confidence with the team comes, by doing that. If there’s opportunities to max the protection and do some things there, we’ll do that by game plans, by design. But I don’t think that things are going to change too much.”
Pederson’s aggressiveness has been a calling card since he arrived in Philadelphia and it has survived through injuries to a variety of players. There’s little reason to expect anything different on that front now that Wentz is back to running the show.
