JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Cut-down day in the NFL is always a hard one on head coaches. Having to tell a player they weren't good enough to make the team is tough.
It must be even tougher when it's your son.
That's what Jaguars coach Doug Pederson had to do Tuesday. His son, tight end Josh Pederson, was among the players the Jaguars waived.
It wasn't an unexpected move -- Josh Pederson was fifth on the depth chart, and the team opted to keep only three tight ends -- but it still probably made for a bit of an awkward conversation.
Asked Monday if he wanted to be the person who told his son he was going to be cut if that were the decision, Doug Pederson joked that he has had to give his son some bad news before.
"I spanked him at one point," Doug Pederson said with a laugh. "Same thing."
Then he got serious and said he and general manager Trent Baalke would treat Josh Pederson the same as any player they cut.
"I'd want to tell him," Doug Pederson said. "Trent would want to visit with him as well, and I definitely want to talk to him and just let him know -- I mean, he's been through this process before with a couple other teams last year. And I'm very familiar with it, obviously, as a former player, and walk him through the process and and let him know that everything's going to be OK."
Father and son reunited less than two days later, however, when the Jaguars signed Josh Pederson to the practice squad. Practice squad players are eligible to be elevated to the active roster three times in a season. After that, players must be signed to the 53-man roster if the team wants to elevate them.
Pederson played for the USFL's Houston Gamblers in the spring, catching 24 passes for 325 yards in 10 games. The Gamblers terminated his contract in early July so he could sign with a then-unnamed NFL team, which turned out to be the Jaguars.
Pederson has never appeared in an NFL regular-season game but spent time on the rosters of the San Francisco 49ers and New Orleans Saints in 2021 and with the Kansas City Chiefs last season. Josh Pederson also followed his father in college, playing four seasons for UL Monroe, where he caught 99 passes for 1,191 yards and 11 touchdowns.
Doug Pederson played at Louisiana-Monroe (then called Northeast Louisiana) from 1987 to 1990, setting 15 school passing records and 15 single-game passing records, including most passing yards in a game (619). He was inducted into the school's hall of fame in 2002.