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How does an underdog become a champion? One of the most innovative, gutsy, and dynamic head coaches in the NFL reveals the strategies behind building the Eagles team that shocked the world by winning the Super Bowl.

Doug Pederson is the very definition of an underdog. He was an undrafted rookie free agent who would go on to play fourteen years in the NFL as a backup quarterback. He was cut five times, yet kept getting back up and into the fray. He would win one Super Bowl, with the Green Bay Packers. When he retired, he decided to coach, but not at the pro level. Instead, he was head coach of Calvary Baptist Academy in Shreveport, Louisiana. After a successful four-year stint there, he returned to the NFL as an assistant coach under Andy Reid with the Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs, where he was instrumental in the development of quarterback Alex Smith and his string of 3,000-plus-yard seasons of passing.

When he was offered the job as head coach of the Eagles, he jumped at it, though few thought he would succeed. In the first season, a year of rebuilding, they finished 7-9. Some doubted his abilities, and before the 2017 season, one “expert” called Pederson the least qualified coach in thirty years. Plagued by the sidelining of seasoned players and devastated by quarterback Carson Wentz’s season-ending knee injury, the Eagles managed a 13-3 recordand home-field advantage in the playoffs. Yet they were still the underdogs in every single game, including the Super Bowl, against the New England Patriots, one of the greatest dynasties in the history of the NFL. It wasn’t until they stunned the Patriots that people finally believed in Pederson and his team.

In Fearless, Pederson reveals the principles that guided him through the ups and downs and tough times of his career, and what it took to become a champion. Through it all, Pederson sustained himself with his faith and the support of his family. He shares the defining stories of his life and career, growing up with his disciplinarian Air Force dad and his tender-hearted mom, developing friendships with Dan Marino and Brett Favre, and learning from mentors, such as Don Shula, Mike Holmgren, and Andy Reid, who helped mold him into the man and coach he is today.

Fearless captures Pederson’s coaching and leadership philosophies and reveals the brilliant mind and indomitable spirit of a man who has entered the pantheon of great coaches.

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“The odds of the Foxes winning the Premier League at the start of the season were the same as the Yeti or the Loch Ness Monster being proven to exist, Christmas being the warmest day of the year in England or Barack Obama playing cricket for England after he left the Oval Office.” — ESPN

On March 21, 2015, Leicester City lost their sixth game in eight matches. Without a victory for two months, they were rock bottom of the English Premier League, heading for certain relegation to the lower division, and about to miss out on a once-in-a-lifetime financial bonanza of TV money and opportunity. As usual, London and Manchester would clean up, the rich would get richer, and the hopes of the small, overlooked, multicultural city would sink.

But Leicester started to win. They stayed up; and in the new season they kept on winning. Favorites for relegation, rank outsiders as potential champions (their 5000 — 1 odds were the longest in the world for any major sporting event), their entire squad had been assembled for less than the cost of a single player for Manchester City. Still, they beat Manchester City and Liverpool, Tottenham and Chelsea: the most incredible cast of written-offs, grafters, misfits, and journeymen came together for the season of their lives.

This is the story every underdog dreams of, every small town with a much larger, more affluent neighbor hopes for, and a triumph that defies logic and expectation.