There has been an argument on whether teams should play their starters during the preseason or not that has begun to heat up in recent seasons.

Among the coaches who are in favor of joint practices over preseason games, Philadelphia Eagles head coach Doug Pederson is very vocal on why he prefers joint practices.

Per Zack Rosenblatt via ProFootballTalk:

“Sometimes you don’t get all the situations in a game that you’d like to see your players in,” Pederson said. “So practices, I can set practices up that way. I can set them up hard. I can set them up where we’re in pads, or going live, whatever it might be that we can really get a true evaluation of a player.

“The only real change from a game to a practice is in a game you don’t get to do it over. At least in a practice setting, if we make a mistake, we can line up and do it again, and so we can correct that mistake right away. In pre‑season games we can’t do that. We get a little bit better evaluation in practice in that case.”

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The Eagles are among the teams who have yet to play their starting quarterback in Carson Wentz this preseason. Through two preseason games, Philly has sustained quite a few injuries to their backup quarterbacks.

Therefore, it is with good reason why Pederson is being cautious with how he deploys his starters in the preseason. The Eagles head coach believes he can get more results from his starters during practices with other teams in the NFL.

Wentz has had two straight seasons where he has suffered season-ending injuries. This offseason, the Eagles handed Wentz a four-year extension worth $128 million. As a result, Philadelphia is focused on keeping their prized quarterback upright for the 2019 season.

While the contracts for most positions continue to rise, we may continue to see a trend of teams beginning to withhold their key starters from the preseason. In the near future, we will likely witness more teams leaning towards holding joint practices rather than risking injury in exhibition games.