Can Carson Wentz be fixed? Kurt Warner thinks so, but it’ll take a lot of work
Warner, a Hall of Famer and Super Bowl champion, says the Eagles have to believe that 2020 wasn't who Wentz really is as a quarterback.
We know that Carson Wentz is broken and needs to be fixed. What we don’t know at the moment is who is going to be doing the repair work.
Despite general manager Howie Roseman’s fingers-on-your-hand analogy about Wentz last month, despite owner Jeffrey Lurie talking about how the Eagles want to get the 28-year-old quarterback “back to that elite progression,” it’s beginning to look more and more like fixing Wentz will be somebody else’s problem very soon.
ESPN’s Adam Schefter appeared on 97.5 The Fanatic a couple of days ago and said that the dismissal of Doug Pederson and the hiring of Nick Sirianni hasn’t really changed Wentz’s desire to be traded.
On Thursday, the NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported that the Eagles have been fielding calls this week from teams asking about Wentz’s availability.
That doesn’t mean the Eagles are shopping him. But the fact of the matter is, even though he is coming off an atrocious season, Wentz has all of the leverage right now.
If he doesn’t want to play for the Eagles anymore, they can’t really make him. I mean, they obviously can. But they’d be fools to try and make him. There is absolutely no upside to keeping a $34 million-a-year quarterback that doesn’t want to be here.
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Regardless of whether Wentz stays or goes, somebody somewhere is going to have a challenging job ahead of them trying to get the Deerhunter right again.
You can’t play much worse than he did last season. Even though he only played in 12 games, he led the league in interceptions (15) and sacks (50). He finished 34th in passing (72.8 rating) and completion percentage (57.4) and 33rd in yards per attempt (6.0). His plus-1 touchdowns-to-interceptions differential was the fifth worst in the league.
That’s a far cry from the numbers he put up in 2017 when he was well on his way to being the league MVP before that ill-fated dive at the goal line against the Rams changed everything.
“It’s a fascinating situation,” Hall of Fame quarterback and NFL Network analyst Kurt Warner said earlier this week. “He was playing at an MVP level a few years ago. Even a year ago, he was inconsistent much of the year, but still brought his team back late in the season and got them into the playoffs.
“I think the Eagles’ approach is, ‘OK, we got away from what made Carson good, and he was pressing and had a bad year last year. But we don’t believe that’s who Carson Wentz is.’ ”
While 2020 clearly was the worst season of Wentz’s career, people tend to forget he was wildly inconsistent last year before finally getting his act together down the stretch. Threw just 17 touchdown passes in the first 11 games. Finished 14th in passing, 17th in completion percentage and 26th in yards per attempt.
Last March at the scouting combine in Indianapolis, Warner focused primarily on mechanical issues, including an overreliance on his arm and an underreliance on his legs and lower body in his throwing motion.
What was behind his nightmare year this season? Mechanics again? Poor decision-making? Hanging on to the ball too long?
“All of the above,” Warner said. “I think there’s some deficiencies in different areas. He’s had some technique deficiencies for the last couple of years that have really hurt him and have hurt his consistency as a thrower.
“I think the Eagles’ approach is, ‘OK, we got away from what made Carson good, and he was pressing and had a bad year last year. But we don’t believe that’s who Carson Wentz is.’ ”
“I also think there are some deficiencies in what he’s seeing on the field and where his eyes are going.”
Warner acknowledged that it’s hard to watch film and fully understand what a team is trying to do, what a player has been coached to do and what exactly the quarterback is seeing on a particular play.
“The way I always break down film is I look at the concept and say what would I do,” he said. “In my mind, I feel I’m pretty smart from a quarterback standpoint on how I would read stuff and what I would do on a particular play.
“But watching Carson, there’s a number of times where I can’t quite figure out what he is doing on certain plays. So he needs more definition on what he’s looking at and why he’s working through his progressions the way he is and some of the things he’s been doing.
“There are some deficiencies there that need to be corrected for us to really, truly see what Carson Wentz can be at this level.”
From 2017 through 2019, Wentz averaged an interception every 68.9 pass attempts. It was one of the best interception rates in the league. in 2019 alone, he averaged one every 86.7 passes. This season he averaged one every 29.1 passes.
Even though the Eagles’ offensive line was ravaged by injuries this season – they used an NFL-record 14 different line combinations – many of Wentz’s 50 sacks were blamed on him for hanging on to the ball too long.
His 2.71-second snap-to-release average was the sixth highest in the league. But that average really wasn’t all that much higher than in 2017 (2.54).
Also, that number often just isn’t relevant. Most quarterbacks with play-extending mobility have high snap-to-release averages. One criticism of Wentz this season was that he didn’t extend plays often enough, choosing to stay in the pocket. But he wasn’t totally to blame for that either. The coaching staff also often was at fault.
Holding on to the ball too long is something “I think you could say about Deshaun Watson and Russell Wilson and all these guys that are such great playmakers,” Warner said. “At the height of what Carson was doing back in ’17, he was the ultimate playmaker.
“The reason he was the runaway MVP before he got hurt was because he was holding on to the ball and doing crazy, special things. Ad-libbing and making those special plays. That becomes a hard balance for these guys. That was something I never had to worry about. I had to get the ball out of my hands as quick as possible.
“But these guys are such great playmakers, it’s that balance between, OK, when do I throw the ball away, when do I get it out of my hand, and when do I try to be special on top of that?”