Super Bowl LII: Eagles coach Doug Pederson an ice cream connoisseur

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — Before they get to Super Bowl Sunday, the Eagles will partake in Super Bowl sundaes.

It’s never too cold for ice cream, even when you are preparing for the biggest game of your life in frigid Minnesota. At least that’s what Eagles coach Doug Pederson believes. His reputation as an ice cream connoisseur is well known among the team — he often ends meeting the night before games by showing the team a video and then telling them “I’ll treat you to some ice cream” — and that fondness for the frozen has now become more widely appreciated.

“I love ice cream, can’t you tell?” Pederson said at his news conference on Thursday. “It’s just something I came up with, a saying. We do serve ice cream as our snack the night before a game, and I love ice cream. And I don’t want to stay in that team meeting too because it’s over there melting. So I just throw it out there every week. Nothing really behind it.”

The devotion to the dessert, though, has some substance. Pederson even celebrated his 50th birthday on Wednesday with ice cream instead of cake. And he’ll dish out the creaminess again on Saturday.

Not that anyone is complaining.

“Hey,” offensive tackle Lane Johnson said, “I like ice cream just as much as him.”

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.