Whatever the Eagles are paying Doug Pederson, it’s probably not enough…

I wish I could tell you what Doug Pederson’s actual money deal with the Philadelphia Eagles really is. First off, since a head coach’s contract does not count against the NFL salary cap, no team is required to report the compensation for its fearless leader. If any of you good folks out there have seen a qualified report on Doug Pederson’s contract with the Eagles, I’d like you to please fill me in by email or comment below.

Many teams in the league do publish their head coach’s salary info. Generally these are teams who are proud to publicize the big money they are paying their guy. Sometimes it’s a proud agent of the coach who releases the contract details—but only if the numbers are juicy enough to attract new clients. But I can find NOTHING on the details of Pederson’s contract.

I’m going out on a limb and suggesting that Pederson probably signed a deal somewhere in the area of $3 million a year guaranteed for 3 years. That’s fantastic money but nowhere near what the top-paid head coaches in the league are getting.

Nathalie “Natty Ice” of France is the French Lady Fan of the Eagles whom I will always remember fondly as the gal who chastised me for writing football articles about money.

In my defense, I’m not obsessed with the money—but more with the relative value the league puts on certain players and coaches. It constantly fluctuates— like a firefly my cat is currently chasing on the deck outside— but the money stats give you some additional idea of what is considered “value” by the owners. Obviously the owners are raking in huge amounts of money from their product so that nobody (including head coaches) are being overpaid.

If indeed Pederson is working on a discounted salary contract compared to the rest of the establishment of “proven” head coaches, I would bet he has a few incentive clauses in there to erase the discount and get him up to speed if things go very well for the Eagles in 2016 and 2017.

But there’s a lot of pressure on him right now to produce immediate results which at least indicate the team is close to relevance again in the NFC playoffs scheme of things. He’s got more expectation and frustration heaped upon him right now than he probably realizes. I mean, how many consecutive “5-year-plans” can you realistically project upon the current populace of Eagles Nation?

That’s why I think, no matter how much they’re paying him on the cheap, he probably deserves more.

It wasn’t like that with Chip Kelly. He was the Messiah from Oregon in 2013. He was already making $3.5 million coaching the Ducks. The Eagles coming off a miserable season in 2012 had nowhere to go but up when he was hired.

In some ways I feel Doug Pederson faces a much more difficult challenge. In fact, he faces the possible outcome that the team in his first year of coaching could regress from the previous coaching era in terms of wins and losses—something Kelly did not have to worry about in 2013.

Kelly, the former coach at Oregon, came to Philly with a hefty price tag. He received a five-year deal worth $32.5 million from the Eagles, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter.

That’s $6.5 million per year. And while the five year term was expected, the $6.5 million/year was a little more than expected.

In comparison to Kelly’s large haul, Greg Schiano received a five-year, $15 million deal when he bolted Rutgers for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2012. Kelly came close to taking that job before deciding at the last second to return to Oregon.

The Greg Schiano deal would be a lot closer to Doug Pederson’s current deal than with the deal Kelly got with the Birds, in my opinion.

Like I said, it’s tough to accurately quantify the actual salaries of all head coaches around the NFL. But here’s a list of the Top 11 known highest coaching salaries in the league compiled by SB Nation’s Ryan Van Bibber:

Rise ‘n Grind
for Friday, June 17, 2016 Compiled by RYAN VAN BIBBER See the archives

Riverboat Ron got a big pay day. “The Panthers head coach signed a three-year, $19.5 million contract extension, paying him an average of $6.5 million per season and making him one of the 10 highest paid coaches in the NFL.”

“He deserved it too. Remember, the Panthers were on the verge of firing him after his first two seasons in Carolina. He got a second chance and took on a new lease on life, or at least coaching. Rivera ditched the conservative coaching tendencies that plague so many NFL head coaches. He went for it on fourth down. He called for big plays over short gains. Riverboat Ron was born! And the Panthers have joined the league’s upper echelon of elite teams.”

Oddly enough, Rivera still isn’t one of the league’s five highest paid coaches. Take a look at the list of the top 11 highest paid coaches (based on various reporting):

Annual salary/ Last contract/ Record since 2012/ Playoff appearances/ Super Bowls

* Payton was suspended for the 2012 season.
** Includes his 11-game stint as an interim HC for the Colts in 2012.
*** Kelly didn’t start coaching in the NFL until 2013.

“That’s the going rate for top-flight coaches, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that three of the last four Super Bowl winners are among the five highest paid. You could argue with Payton’s contract, but the Saints were only two years removed from a Super Bowl at the time and coming off a 13-win season.

“There’s only one coach on this list who hasn’t been to the playoffs since 2012, Jeff Fisher. His Rams haven’t even had a winning season, not even a .500 season, but he did help the team relocate and make his owner even richer, so that’s probably worth something to the rotten human who signs his checks.

“Even at $6.5 million per season, Rivera’s a bargain. We don’t talk a lot about coaching salaries because they don’t count against the cap, but it’s one of the most important expenditures a team makes. The Panthers were smart to lock up Riverboat Ron.”

We’ll know soon enough if the Eagles will get a chance to be smart enough to lock up Doug Pederson.