By Patrick Del Gaone, Sports Talk Philly staff writer 
If nothing else, Doug Pederson is refreshingly honest compared to most NFL coaches.
After concluding Monday's presser by admitting that not every Philadelphia Eagle played hard in Sunday's decisive loss, and stating that he planned to ask tight end Zach Ertz about a specific play in question, Pederson made clear that the Stanford product needs to protect his quarterback in a similar situation going forward.
"If you really go back and look at the play, Carson was ahead of him at the time," Pederson said. "And it wouldn't have been a factor because he was gonna go out of bounds at the time. Obviously Zach is taking a lot of heat for it, but he understands too, those plays will come up again, and he knows he needs to make one."
Safety Rodney McLeod is also believed to be among the Eagles culpable of going through the motions at times, given that he was referenced by a reporter just prior to Pederson's concession that certain players mailed it in.
This morning, Pederson was emphatic about the positive response he's received from players after the contentious comments.
"They have been great," Pederson said. "The players are positive. The players know, they understand, and I've been in that chair before, so I get it. I think that's the great thing about having played the game is you can relate to those guys, and you know exactly what they're going through. We've had a great response, and we're looking forward to a great week."
Last week was anything but great. The Bengals scored on each of their first six possessions against Jim Schwartz's deteriorating defense, much of which can be attributed to Cincinnati's unrelenting success on third down.
Andy Dalton and the Bengals' offense converted seven of 14 opportunities on the day. Moreover, the Eagles' defense has failed to get off the field on 17 of 28 third downs in the last two weeks.
Pederson allows Schwartz complete autonomy over the defense, but did meet with the defensive guru after Sunday's troubling loss.
"We talked," Pederson said. "We kind of both agree, if you're gonna blitz more, you're gonna ask your back-end to hold up [more]. You're gonna give up something to get something. There's a fine line there. Going back to Sunday, there were 17 pressure in that game. We just gotta trust the process. We're not gonna reinvent the wheel, we're not gonna change for the sake of change. If it benefits us, we will. I trust Jim and the defensive staff, obviously, to have a great game plan going forward."
You can watch the full press conference from Pederson below.
