If you watch how the cutscene plays out in the DS remake (highly recommended as it actually ads some much needed weight to FFIV's otherwise silly script), you can see that both Rydia and Cecil are both still kind of lashing out because of their own conflicts and losses. Edward kind of gets a grip along with the rest of them and they kind of just seem to feel that they can do more if they calm down and just work together and stuff.

And even in the SNES version, no one calls him a coward after that.