Eagles head coach isn’t worried about the weather in Seattle …at least not yet. Photo by Andy Lewis / contrastphotography.com

Eagles Head Coach Doug Pederson Press Conference
11.18.16

DOUG PEDERSON: Good morning. Let me just start by saying that we extended the contracts of a couple of our players – [LS] Jon Dorenbos and [S] Chris Maragos – and we’re just so excited to have these two guys locked up for the next few years. [Both are] obviously special teams players: Chris being a big part of what we do on special teams and his value there, and it makes me sleep at night having a long snapper with his experience, Jon’s experience. [It helps] knowing that that operation will be around for the next few years. Congratulations to both of those guys this morning.

Injury update: [S] Terrence Brooks will be listed as out for this game, but he’s getting better and we’ll see what happens next week. And then the only other two: [TE] Zach Ertz will be listed as questionable, and [WR] Jordan Matthews will be listed as questionable. Everybody else is okay.

Q. For Ertz, when did that injury happen?
DOUG PEDERSON: It happened Wednesday outside, just tightness in the hamstring – nothing structurally, no damage, no tears, nothing like that. Just a tightness in the hamstring.

Q. Are those guys practicing today?
DOUG PEDERSON: They’ll practice today, yes.

Q. Did you have to outbid Vegas to keep Dorenbos?
DOUG PEDERSON: (laughter) No, he actually was excited to be staying here, so we’re excited. We didn’t have to update Vegas.

Q. It’s been a long time since the Eagles have extended players in-season. Is this a change in philosophy?
DOUG PEDERSON: I just think it’s important that we can – maybe not change in philosophy – but I think it’s important when you know when you look at your roster and you see guys that are going to be free agents who are big parts of your football team, if you can obviously lock them up, sooner is better than later, obviously. We’re just excited to have both of these two guys locked up now.

Q. When you got here, you probably looked at the whole team, and special teams has been an area where this team really thrived. How important was it to you that that continued?
DOUG PEDERSON: Oh, I think it’s very important. Part of the messaging to the team from my standpoint is we have three aspects of our team – you’ve got offense, defense, special teams – and it’s so important to the success of your team and that we’ve seen it already this year, the importance of that. Hopefully we can continue to build on that and good things will happen.

Q. Why do you think Eagles special teams coordinator Dave Fipp has done such a good job leading all those units?
DOUG PEDERSON: I just think he’s a great teacher, number one. He keeps things simple; the schemes are relatively the same each week. The other thing that I’ve noticed with being around Dave, too, is he spends a lot more time doing drill work in practice as opposed to just running kickoff return after kickoff return after kickoff return or punt. He’s constantly doing drill work with the guys and teaching them fundamentals, and I think that’s a big part of why he’s had success there on our [special] teams.

Q. Jordan Matthews’ injury is just the back spasms? Is that just kind of something that flares up from time to time?
DOUG PEDERSON: It comes from time to time, and obviously this one happened in the weight room on Tuesday, actually, and just precautionary on Wednesday and just kind of making sure he’s got plenty of rest and ready to go for Sunday.

Q. On the roster there are four wide receivers. Are you going to have to bring an extra one to Seattle in case Jordan is not feeling well?
DOUG PEDERSON: Yeah, we’re going to bring [WR] Paul Turner. We’re just going to bring him just in case. We’re going for two days, and just want to make sure that if nothing goes awry in the next couple of days that we have a backup plan.

Q. You had said earlier in the week, you had mentioned that you used to go to the Kingdome and watch the Seahawks. Does that make this trip a little more special for you?
DOUG PEDERSON: It does. It’s going home for me. I grew up about two hours north of Seattle and I know the Seattle area very well. Obviously things have changed, but the landscape is still the same.

But yeah, it’s a homecoming of sorts for me, and I still have a lot of family and friends out there, obviously growing up in high school and everything; got a few texts this week, just congratulating us and wishing us luck going out there.

Q. How has G Isaac Seumalo looked as the extra tight end-tackle?
DOUG PEDERSON: Tight end, tackle? Good. He’s very athletic. He plays the part very well. He did a nice job in the game last Sunday against Atlanta. Increased role a little bit this week, but yeah, he’s done really good, and obviously also in there at guard and also giving him some center reps during the week on the service team is helping him progress along nicely.

Q. How is Carson coming along with the silent count?
DOUG PEDERSON: Good. Good. Yesterday we cranked that noise up pretty loud. I think we were around 100 decibels or something like that in that indoor facility. But he did a nice job yesterday. We had a couple of false starts yesterday, tackles, [T Halapoulivaati Vaitai] had one and [T Jason Peters] had one, and we’ll go back inside today and work it again with the noise. It’s been really good. We continue to use it, continue to work on it. All of our cadences are available in the silent count, ones, twos, threes, doubles, everything is available, so we just keep working.

Q. As a receiver, it’s only natural to want the football. Back in your playing days when you had a conversation, so to speak, with a receiver about him saying throw me the ball, how did you respond to that? How would you like Carson to respond to those types of demands?
DOUG PEDERSON: You know, when I was a player and watching guys like [former Packers QB] Brett Favre do this and of course [former Dolphins QB] Dan Marino, learned from both of those guys, they would just grab them, and instead of talking about it, they’d actually grab them after practice and work on those routes, and that’s where you gain your trust, and as a quarterback-receiver, that’s where you start building that bond. You know, you can’t catch enough balls. You can’t throw enough balls to each guy individually, and of course during games you know there’s only one ball, and it can only go to one person. But that’s how you handle it. You just grab that guy and you continue to talk through, and from a quarterback’s perspective, this is how I want that receiver to run this route with this look, so he and Carson just need to keep talking and they need to grab each other after practice and just keep working on those routes, and that’s how they get the trust and the bond going.

Q. You have a run game that went for over 200 yards last week. How much more confidence now are you at calling those plays and the players executing in the run game?
DOUG PEDERSON: Well, if they work, I’ll call them all the time. The run game is obviously important. You know, everything kind of stems — you hear it around the league, coaches talk all the time, ‘Hey, get the run game going, get the run game. We got to have the ability to run. We have to run this week.’ It takes a little pressure off your quarterback, number one. Last week was great to see our offensive line really took it to heart, our backs played and ran extremely hard and extremely well, and we’re going to have to continue to do that going forward. I think it just alleviates some of the pressure and some of the stress off of Carson, and allows him to free up and do more in the drop back, play-action, screen game, and again, it all stems off of the run.

Q. Yesterday Eagles defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz was saying that if you looked back in May, you wouldn’t think that a guy like CB Jalen Mills, seventh-round pick, would be following a guy like Falcons WR Julio Jones around the field. I was just wondering, how much growth have you seen from Jalen since you got him, and also since that first game you played against the Bears?
DOUG PEDERSON: Yeah, well, Jalen caught our eye right away in OTA’s and obviously in training camp. One, very physical on the outside, doesn’t mind contact. He’s a good tackler. Had a lot of PBU’s against our guys in training camp, and just a tough, tough corner, and being able to play early and often now throughout this season and some of the things that he’s done, it just shows the confidence that our defensive staff, myself, have in a player like that. You know, and I can also say the same with Big V and [G] Isaac [Seumalo] now, some of these younger players that are getting a chance to play. It’s just valuable reps for them, and it’s going to make us stronger and better and deeper at those positions.

Q. You mentioned going inside yesterday and you’re going to go back in today. How much do you sacrifice by not having the extra room of the outside, and how tough was that decision to put the noise over being outside?
DOUG PEDERSON: Well, you know, it’s harder from the individual groups to be able to get some work done individually. Obviously outside you can do that, and the equipment and all that stuff, trying to come inside. But you know, it’s one of those things where you’re going to give up something to get something, and we’re trying to work on the noise and work on that, so it’s obviously a lot easier to do indoors, and even though this is an outdoor stadium, it’s still a very loud place to play. It’s just a sacrifice you make, but it’s a valuable one, preparing your team for what they’re about to face.

Q. They’re calling for rain, I think, Sunday. How does that impact things?
DOUG PEDERSON: You know, like early in the week it was 70, 80 percent. I think it’s down 40, 50 percent, but it’s going to be — it should rain consistently, I think, throughout the day. I try to just — with the team, not use it as anything to motivate, but we can’t let it be a distraction for us. We’ve just got to go play. I think it might be our first one this year, weather game, and it’ll be great for us to play in something like this, for Carson to play in it on the road. But again, we don’t — unless it’s real, real windy and rainy, we won’t change much with the game plan or anything like that.