By Patrick Del Gaone, Sports Talk Philly staff writer 
For the first time in eight games as head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, Doug Pederson and his team tasted defeat in gut-wrenching fashion on Sunday at Ford Field.
While the Eagles were far from perfect in their performance, many believe their efforts were hindered by a slew of questionable calls in the Lions favor, most noticeably on Ryan Mathews' fumble which set up Detroit's go-ahead field goal late in the 4th quarter. The ball appeared to be touching Jason Kelce, who was laying partly out of bounds.
This afternoon, Pederson was asked whether or not the ball should've been ruled dead at that point.
"It is, it's a dead ball out of bounds," Pederson said. "That's the rule. I wanted to make sure this morning that I was correct in that ruling, but we can't cough the ball up."
"[The explanation was] that he didn't touch it, that it wasn't touched by us. We'll send a few clips in [to the league], but that's not why we lost this football game."
The first-year head coach's expression showed clear disappointment regarding the blown review and perplexing explanation. In total, 14 penalties were called on Philadelphia for a whopping 111 yards yesterday, while just two infractions went against the Lions for 18 yards.
"We almost overcame it and won," Pederson said. "That's a tribute to the football team, and the way the guys battled. To have as many plays on defense to start this game, three drives, it was like 32 plays if you count penalties and everything. It's a bunch of football. Our game was, we battled, we hung in there. [The] defense played outstanding in the second half. We made plays on offense, and we had a chance to win it with two minutes in the game."
Renowned Eagles play-by-play announcer, Merrill Reese, joined the 94WIP Morning Show this morning to discuss the agonizing 24-23 loss.
"One of the worst officiated games I've seen in a long time," Reese said. "It's ridiculous. It's absolutely ridiculous. You can talk about the defense being flat on its heels at the beginning of the game, early in the first half, but you know what two of the biggest plays – the way that game, the tone was set, was with [Lions halfback] Theo Riddick going around the edge. Connor Barwin was absolutely held. And then Vinny Curry was practically tackled going in the other direction. Those were tone setters."
"You talk about the things they did wrong, the officials did wrong, they had no control of that game. They were flustered. They had [linebacker] Connor Barwin illegally down field on an offensive play, it took hours it seemed like to unravel. They had Darren Sproles – Darren Sproles isn't big enough to throw a chop block!"
A strong condemnation from one of the most seasoned broadcasters in all of sports. Reese has just about seen it all in his 40 years broadcasting games, and his words should resonate with the NFL and its officials, particularly considering he goes back to the days without replay review of any kind.
Nearing the conclusion of today's presser, Pederson was emphatic that the character and determination he saw last night will help this team move on immediately.
"I saw how ticked off this team was at the end of this football game," Pederson said. "Despite everything that went on in this game. This is a different football team than a year ago, this is a resilient football team. When I walked on the plane last night, everyone's on their IPads watching the game, they're correcting the mistakes, they're wanting to get back out on the football field. From a coach's perspective, that's great to see your players take ownership that way. As bad as it hurts, at the same time they understand that we let one slide. So this thing, it won't spiral. They're taking ownership of it."
You can watch the full press conference from Pederson below.
