Colin Cowherd suggests unique name in USC head coaching search

USC on Monday announced that it fired Clay Helton amidst his seventh full season at the helm of the program, and just a day after the decision, FOX Sports host Colin Cowherd suggested that the Trojans consider a unique name for the vacancy: former Philadelphia Eagles head coach Doug Pederson.

“Nice guy, didn’t get it done,” Cowherd said of Helton on The Herd.

In light of Helton’s firing, USC athletic director Mike Bohn has named Donte Williams the Trojans’ interim head coach. Williams, considered an up-and-coming coach by colleagues across the country, was first hired by USC in 2020 as the secondary coach; although he’s since been promoted — first to associate head coach, then to interim head coach — USC is not expected to remove the interim tag from his current title. Instead, Cowherd says that Bohn should consider bringing in Pederson to right the ship.

“College football is in a perpetual cycle of thinking small,” Cowherd continued. “I read every single college football reporter yesterday and it was all the same names up for the USC job. Just a bunch of nice college guys. … Last time [the USC football program] mattered, they had an NFL coach in Pete Carroll. They didn’t matter before then until they had an NFL guy John Robinson.”

Cowherd said that NFL coaches have the ability to command the attention, spotlight and pressure that comes with being a head coach of a major program in a power city. He cites Chip Kelly at UCLA as an example, as Kelly has the Bruins on the road to success in year four, and he’s doing it in a city as big as Los Angeles. That’s why he suggests that the Trojans go after Pederson, who last coached the Philadelphia Eagles in 2020, and won a Super Bowl before his firing last season.

“Could college football, for once in my life, go big and not rural?” Cowherd asked. “Get on the phone and call Doug Pederson. He won a Super Bowl with Nick Foles.”

Pederson’s NFL career began as an undrafted quarterback out of Louisiana-Monroe, and he played 13 seasons as a backup quarterback, primarily to Brett Farve on the Green Bay Packers — where he won Super Bowl XXXI — and later as a backup to Dan Marino in 1995. He retired in 2004, after his second stint with Green Bay, and began coaching at Cavalry Baptist Academy in 2005.

Pederson spent four years at Cavalry Baptist before he was hired by the Eagles as the offensive quality control coordinator in 2009, then promoted to quarterbacks coach in 2011. He was later hired by the Kansas City Chiefs as the offensive coordinator, but returned to Philadelphia in 2016 as the Eagles’ head coach. Pederson spent four and a half seasons as the Eagles head coach, where he compiled a 42-37 record and won a Super Bowl.