Here are Doug Pederson’s full comments on Josh Huff’s arrest

Doug Pederson addressed the media Wednesday morning, following Josh Huff’s Tuesday morning arrest. Here are his full comments on Huff’s arrest, and the repercussions.

your take on the Josh Huff situation? — “Obviously disappointed. It’s not what you want on a player day off, to see happen. He and I spoke about it privately, and it’s one of the things I talk about with players all the time. You just try to eliminate distractions and take care of your business outside of the building. He understands, and obviously it’s out of our hands at this point, and we’ve just got to see where it goes.”

Huff’s status with the team -- “Nothing changes right now, until we get — again, it’s out of our hands right now, it’s a legal matter, until we get more information on it.”

when do distractions end? -- “That’s a great question. It’s kind of like you’re the father of your house, and you’ve just got to keep talking to your siblings, and to your kids, and just keep reiterating the importance of who you represent, what you represent, your families, the Philadelphia Eagles, and you’ve got to make smart choices. It’s all about choices and consequences in life, and if you make bad choices you’ve got to suffer the consequences. So we’ll just keep continuing to talk about it.”

repercussions for Huff? -- “Until I find out exactly the severity of it and what’s going to happen down the road, right now nothing, and we’ll take it one day at a time.”

will he play Sunday? -- “As of right now, yes.”

league repercussions? — “I would assume, it’s hard to speculate, but I’m sure you’ve seen it in the past. There could be fines, there could be suspensions, there could be anything of that nature. But again, until we gather all the information, we just don’t know what’s going to happen.”

what do you mean by gathering info? -- “I just need to hear officially, through an investigation, what took place and what happened.”

police report not enough? -- “I just want to ... I want to see exactly what happened, maybe talk to some people, and find out. It’s outside of the building, obviously, and a lot of times these situations are out of our control, and I want to get everything tightened up.”

was he coming from the NovaCare Complex? — “He was here yesterday morning. He came in and watched the game film, and then left from here. So it was some time after he left.”

feel there’s a need for meeting with team? — “I do. I think that’s part of my message to the team this morning, because I hadn’t seen them in a couple of days, so part of the message this morning is how we handle our business. I also think, too, that if you make poor choices in life, you’re going to make poor choices on the football field, you’re going to make ... if it’s a constant thing, then eventually you suffer the consequences. When you’re dealing with so many guys -- coaches, players, office — trying to keep everyone on the same page, when you’re dealing with a lot of personalities and backgrounds, my job too sometimes is to be that father figure for some of these players, and understanding their history and where they’ve come from, and how they grew up. It may not be how I grew up as a child, or as an adolescent, or a teen, or whatever, but at the same time I’m going to wrap my arm around them, and love on them, and try to show them the right direction.”

possibly brought gun on the premise? -- “I’m not going to speculate on that.”

people on outside looking in ask if you have control of team, what do you say? -- “I would say that I do. Again, I can’t control what you do once you leave here, and I’m not responsible for you, I can’t control what you do once you leave the premises. Neither can the Philadelphia Eagles control what I do when I leave these premises. I just know who I am as a person, and I try to relay that to the team, and just let them know that, hey guys, you have to ... the spotlight is on us. In this city, in this market, the spotlight is on everything we do. You have to be smart. You have to make the right choices. You have to do things differently. You just have to do them differently, because everything’s magnified. But again, it’s ... once they leave here, that’s the hardest thing to control.”

not getting through? — “We just keep talking about it. Keep talking about it.”

more discipline might need to come down? -- “I think that there comes a time when there could be some discipline like that. Obviously this could be a case. I just want to make sure that these guys, that I’m doing right by these players, and that they’re doing right by themselves. That we’re handling our business away from this business right, and if that means discipline at some point, then we address it at that point.”

thoughts on discipline before legal rulings, according to severity — “It’s hard to put a bullet point, checklist sort of what they do. These are all things that ... is it something that I condone? Is it something that I would expect? No. It’s not. I would expect them, again, it goes back to being a man and making the right decisions. I mean these guys are professional athletes, they’re still obviously young adults learning about life, young married, young kids. These are the things they need to focus on and they need to see. I’ve been through that as a player, I’ve seen it with other teammates, things like that, but at the same time, they need to know that the decisions and choices they make away fro this building are going to affect them as a player, it’s going to affect eventually the team, and it’s going to affect their future as a player in the NFL.”

part of message address guns? — “I have them. I have hunting rifles and things like that. But they’re registered, they’ve got permits for them. Again, there’s a league policy, there’s a Philadelphia Eagles policy, and those are things that we revisit every year, and we just need to continue to revisit these things. I don’t necessarily understand why they need guns, outside of maybe sport hunting or whatever, but we just continue to educate our players and curb it the best we can.”

contact with the league? — “They have not. I would expect it at some point, but at this point we haven’t heard anything.”

explanation for what Huff had on him? -- “I don’t have an explanation for it, no. I don’t know why. I don’t know why, to be honest with you.”

if these things continue to happen, would you feel like you need to do more? — “I feel like that. Obviously, if it continues, there’s ... and again, this thing is still an open investigation, so I don’t even know what’s going to happen in this case, whether it be from the league or from the Eagles. But yeah. There’s obviously more you can look into and do down the road.”

[...]

distraction for team talking about guns, Huff, etc. -- “It’s probably more of a distraction for me than the players. Because I’m the one having to answer and field the questions. I know once I leave here, I’m on the practice field and it’s business as usual. This obviously was expected, but there’s no greater feeling than getting back on the field and getting to work.”

[...]

are you pissed? -- “I mean, deep down, yeah. Deep down you’re obviously disappointed and dejected, yeah. I don’t sit in my office all day and expect something to happen. I pray that it doesn’t happen. I’m disappointed for the choices they make, and we just learn from them and move on.”

learn from Andy Reid about dealing with things like this? — “He was very cerebral in the way that, he wanted all the information as well. He wanted to find out exactly what had happened, talk to people if he could, and make a calculated decision. Again, it was kind of the same thing when it’s outside of the building and outside of our control. It kind of gets turned over the the authorities at that point, so a lot of the same things have stemmed from me watching him.”

changes at WR rotation? — “No.”

what’d Josh say? — “I’ll just tell you this, he was very disappointed and very dejected. Very apologetic, obviously. Said it wouldn’t happen again.”