Head coach Doug Pederson had no problem admitting on Monday afternoon that he's already called in a favor to first-year Bears head coach Matt Nagy.
The Eagles not only need to win on Sunday against Washington in order to make the playoffs. They have to do some scoreboard watching and hope that the Chicago Bears can knock off the Vikings in Minnesota.
"Maybe I've done that, we'll have to see. Maybe I've already done that this morning," he joked with reporters.
Pederson and Nagy quickly climbed the coaching ladder together starting in Philadelphia where Pederson was the quality control coach in 2009 while Nagy served as a coaching intern that year in Training Camp. The two traveled together in 2013 with Andy Reid to Kansas City where Pederson was the offensive coordinator and Nagy the quarterbacks coach. When Pederson returned to Philadelphia to become the head coach in 2016, Nagy was the co-offensive coordinator and then assumed full control of the position in 2017.
The Bears are the NFC North Champions in Nagy's rookie season and currently sit as the No. 3 seed in the conference. With a win and a Rams loss, the Bears will get the No. 2 seed and, more importantly, a first-round bye. Los Angeles hosts the 49ers, who at 4-11 have no chance at a playoff berth. If the Bears remain at the No. 3 spot, they could end up hosting the Vikings the following week in the Wild Card round. Would the Bears want to show all of their cards, so the speak?
With the first-round bye still a possibility, Nagy told reporters Monday that he is approaching this like a normal week.
"It'd be different if you couldn't move at all," he said, according to ChicagoBears.com. "But the fact that you're going there to win this game and do everything you can based on where we're at right now as we stand in this situation, you have to go about it that way. There'll be some things maybe here or there that we'll take a look at. But we're just trying to keep this as normal as we possibly can, knowing that we're going to (try to) win."
The part about "some things maybe here or there that we'll take a look at" could indicate that the Bears, too, will do some scoreboard watching. If the Rams have the game at hand, Nagy could very well decide to pull the reins back a bit. Hopefully, Pederson sent 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan a holiday card.
