Eagles coach Doug Pederson shares ‘dead horse’ story from Packers’ QB meeting room

When Philadelphia Eagles coach Doug Pederson was a quarterback in the league, he didn’t find meetings all that useful.

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SiriusXM Editor
July 14, 2017

Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre watches Doug Pederson (18) drop back for a pass at training camp, Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2004, in Green Bay, Wis.

Since he became an NFL coach, Doug Pederson knows a thing or two about meetings with players.

Endless meetings.

You get into camp or you get into the regular season, and it’s like meeting after meeting

When he was a quarterback in the league, Pederson didn’t find them all that useful. And while backing up Brett Favre in Green Bay, Peterson was part of a collective effort by the Packers’ QBs to make sure offensive coordinator Tom Rossley and quarterbacks coach Darrell Bevell knew how much meetings were disliked.

“We had a picture, an eight-by-10 picture of a dead horse on the ground, legs up, the whole thing,” Pederson told Bruce Murray and Kirk Morrison on the SiriusXM Blitz. “And we stuck it on our wall walking out the door of our quarterback meeting room. You get into camp or you get into the regular season, and it’s like meeting after meeting, especially veteran players.

‘We keep beating a dead horse’

“You’re like, ‘Why are we meeting? Coach, we’re just beating a dead horse.’ And every time, we’d go, ‘Hey, Coach, see the picture right there? We keep beating a dead horse. Let’s go, man. Let’s get to practice, let’s do something.’ It was a lot of fun. We kept it up throughout the year.”

That wasn’t the only photo-hanging the quarterbacks did. After Lambeau Field was renovated, photographs of Packers Hall-of-Famers decorated the walls of each position group’s meeting room. In the quarterback room, there was a photo of Bart Starr and Favre, before his official induction.

‘Craig Nall and I went and printed pictures of ourselves and stuck them up on the wall’

“So,” Peterson explained, “(fellow backup) Craig Nall and I went and printed pictures of ourselves and stuck them up on the wall and said, ‘Who are we? We’re on the team, too.'”


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