In his regular “Football Morning in America” column, NBC Sports’ Peter King took a look at the current landscape of the quarterback position in the NFL, with a particular focus on the DeShaun Watson situation and the recent Carson Wentz trade. On Wentz, he explains why the Indianapolis Colts took a risk on the franchise quarterback instead of unloading the capital it would have taken to move up in the NFL Draft and why the deal was fair to both sides.
He also spoke to his sources around the league and came away with these three primary reasons that Wentz regressed so significantly in 2020:
1) He saw ghosts; he often rushed throws even when he didn’t have to because he was used to heavy pressure from a line he didn’t trust anymore.
2) He didn’t respond well to hard coaching, tuning out much of what he was being taught. After the Eagles spent a 2020 second-round pick on a quarterback, Jalen Hurts, Wentz didn’t trust the front office either.
3) Wentz hurrying his drops and throws resulted in a crashing to earth of his accuracy, which declined from 69.6 percent in 2018 to 57.4 percent in 2020.
I think the first and third reasons above are valid and probably correct. The Eagles’ offensive line was bad in 2020, but it often looked even worse than it was because Wentz was getting spooked by pressure, be it real or perceived. I have long questioned number two, though there are now several reports that claim something similar. Whether all of those reports have the same source or same pair of sources is another question, and it’s unlikely we’ll ever get a definitive answer. Is it possible it wasn’t the “coaching” but the coaches themselves that Wentz lost faith in?
As for not trusting the front office, can you blame him? I think there is a common misconception that Wentz was frustrated that the Eagles drafted Jalen Hurts and wanted him to compete for his job. The team had just handed Wentz a lengthy and lucrative contract extension; they had no plan to have him compete for the starting job.
Instead, Wentz was frustrated for the same reason that many Eagles fans were frustrated with the pick at the time: this was an aging roster with many clear holes and needs, and taking a backup quarterback in the second round just wasn’t very smart. Add in the missed draft picks in recent years and poor decisions on free agents and re-signings, and that is enough to vex even the most resolute quarterback.
If Wentz is able to bounce back in Indianapolis with Frank Reich and Jalen Hurts is unable to prove he is the long-term answer in Philadelphia, Wentz may very well be vindicated in the years to come. But it’s now up to Reich to “fix” Wentz and remove those ghosts that haunted him last season.
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Mike Maher is the editor and publisher of The Birds Blitz. Follow him on Twitter @mikeMaher and @TheBirdsBlitz and check out his archive for all of his latest stories about the Eagles and the NFL.
