‘Oh heck, no!’: Michael Vick and DeSean Jackson didn’t plan on coaching. Doug Pederson sees why they did.
Vick and Jackson never expressed an interest in coaching while playing for the Eagles. Their former coach suggests the way the two led made them suited to the business.
Doug Pederson was in the car, making the drive to the Glass Bowl in Toledo, Ohio, for a Mid-American Conference game that he was set to be on the microphone for last weekend between Toledo and Western Michigan. The former NFL head coach, now two years removed from coaching the Jaguars, is two months into his new job as a CBS Sports color commentator for college football, and it’s taken him from Fargo, N.D., to Logan, Utah, and beyond.
Pederson says it’s been “different being on the other side of the camera,” since beginning his new role two months ago. And similarly, two of his former Eagles players are early into their careers as head college football coaches.
Michael Vick, for whom Pederson was the quarterbacks coach for in Philly in 2011 and 2012 and coincided with for four of Vick’s five years in Philly, and DeSean Jackson, who also later played for the former Eagles head coach in 2019 and 2020, will once again face off at Lincoln Financial Field on Saturday (3 p.m., ESPN+) as part of the One Philly Historically Black Colleges and University week.
» READ MORE: HBCU football returns to the Linc. Meet the four teams competing this weekend.
Vick, who is leading the 4-4 Norfolk State Spartans into Philly, and Jackson, at the helm of Delaware State (4-4), are each in their second seasons leading an HBCU. Jackson’s Delaware State beat Vick’s Norfolk State last year at the Linc, 27-20, in front of more than 47,000 fans.
Pederson admits that it “surprises me” that Vick and Jackson got into coaching, since neither expressed interest previously as players when he coached in Philly. The 58-year-old added that the way they “helped their teammates, very unselfish like” could have led them into the coaching business.
“I’ve asked players that have had great careers, ‘Do you want to get into coaching? And they’re like, ‘Oh heck, no! I never get into coach, you know, type of thing,’” Pederson told The Inquirer by phone. “That’s why it’s kind of exciting for two guys that have had great careers [to] get into coaching and kind of pouring back into young men. That’s the exciting part.”
Pederson got to know Vick intimately by being his position coach for two seasons, a period of time in which the former Eagles quarterback started 23 games. The former coach described his QB as “very quiet in his approach,” but was quick to add that Vick’s “actions on the field speak louder.”
That description matched Vick’s demeanor at last year’s HBCU Battle of the Legends game. Pederson also noted that when Vick first arrived to Philly, he was at “one of the lowest moments of his life” after serving a 23-month prison sentence for federal dogfighting charges.
“It’s exciting though for me, having coached a guy like Michael Vick, to see him now kind of giving it back and coaching, himself,” Pederson continued. “ … How he leads his football teams, I know they’re going to play hard for him, and they’re going to play well for him.
“The way he just commanded the room, commanded the huddle when he was with us in Philadelphia … just one of those infectious personalities, and we saw that on a day-to-day basis.”
» READ MORE: Lincoln embraces homecoming as HBCU game brings the school back to Philly after 16 years
Jackson, for whom Pederson was on the coaching staff during the former dynamic wide receiver’s two separate stints in Philly, had a much different energy about him, the coach recalls. Jackson was “a little more wild, a little more about DeSean Jackson,” said Pederson, who was the offensive quality control coach in 2009 and 2010 before getting a promotion to QB coach.
“And then I got him later in his career, too, when [he was] maybe a little more relaxed, a little more humble,” Pederson added. “What I saw too was how he brought the young guys along a little bit, and you didn’t see that when he was in his early days. But as he matured and got older, you could kind of see that more and more pouring himself into other teammates.”
Neither Vick nor Jackson reached out to Pederson when they each made the leap into coaching almost two years ago, but the Eagles coach, who won the franchise’s first Super Bowl title in 2017, said if they did, he would offer them this piece of advice.
“I would just tell them to continue to be themselves. That’s the best advice that I got when I got into coaching,” Pederson said. “Just do it your way and have conviction about that and a belief system that you’re doing it the right way and trust that. … It’s your way and leave your mark on the program, leave it better than when you found it, so to speak, and I think both of them are.”
