Commanders’ Carson Wentz gets the best of former coach Doug Pederson with a four-TD comeback win

LANDOVER, Md. — First, Carson Wentz shook Doug Pederson’s hand. Then he ripped out his heart.

Wentz overcame interceptions on back-to-back plays and threw touchdown passes of 49 and 24 yards in the last 10 minutes of the fourth quarter Sunday and turned a 22-14 deficit into a 28-22 comeback win for the ages. All Pederson could do on Jacksonville’s sideline was watch, like a man living a dream turned into a nightmare. Wentz used to win games like this for Pederson.

Pederson and the Eagles drafted Wentz No. 2 overall in 2016 and developed him into a Pro Bowl talent within a year; Wentz’s sophomore performance set the Eagles up to win Super Bowl LII. Wentz’s big arm and conscience-free play delivered two more scintillating seasons under Pederson before their acrimonious split in 2020, which sent Wentz first to Indianapolis and now to Washington and landed Pederson with Jacksonville last winter. That game included Wentz’s last shining moment as an Eagle.

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He threw two touchdown passes in the last 4 minutes, 38 seconds against the visiting Giants on Oct. 22, 2020, to overcome an 11-point deficit, which remains the only comeback performance bigger than Sunday’s.

Was Pederson having flashbacks? Not that he’d admit.

“I was coaching our team,” Pederson said. “He showed a lot of composure and brought his team back. Hats off to him for doing that.”

Wentz cleverly, or conveniently, did not address the portion of a postgame question that concerned him facing Pederson, which was too bad. They have a fascinating history.

Wentz won only once more for the Eagles. Pederson benched him 4½ games later. By the end of the 2020 season, after a series personnel mistakes and a laundry list of injuries to Wentz, the quarterback’s ego and body were so badly compromised he couldn’t function. Their relationship soured. Wentz made it clear he would never play for Pederson again.

That got Pederson fired, and Wentz still got traded, all of which — thanks to NFL schedulers with a keen senses of humor — pitted them against each other in the season opener. Just like that, the two worst franchises in the NFL had a compelling story line for opening week.

It began around brunch time Sunday.

At 11:01 a.m., Pederson took the field in full Dougie Strut. His return to the NFL was about two hours away, and he savored every second as he ambled toward the Jaguars’ sideline.

“For me, it was exciting,” Pederson said. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have butterflies before the game.”

He hugged Commanders linebacker Cole Holcomb, spoke with him for a bit, then turned toward the field to get his first chore out of the way.

He walked 30 steps down the 20-yard line, stopped at the north side hash marks, and hugged his nemesis, Carson Wentz. They spoke for 4 minutes and 25 seconds.

“It was a good chance to visit with him, see how he’s doing, catch up,” said Pederson, who also hugged Wentz postgame. “We’re the same people, just different colors. I wished him well.”

Maybe it was small talk: Wentz’s little girls or Pederson’s three grown sons, one of whom had gotten engaged the day before.

Maybe it was shop talk: Super Bowl hero Nick Foles now in Indianapolis as a backup with Frank Reich, where Carson failed last season; or Howie Roseman finally finding some front-office mojo after both Pederson and Wentz exited after that disastrous 4-11-1 season.

It certainly was not trash talk: Pederson confronting Carson to his face for getting him fired. Pederson had made the playoffs in three of the previous four seasons, had won four playoff games — all without Wentz — and had brought Philadelphia its only Super Bowl title after the 2017 season. But Carson didn’t like him any more, so Pederson was gone.

Finally, his five minutes of duty done, Pederson returned to his sideline. He posed with his wife, Jeannie, who then wanted a picture with some of her girlfriends.

One of the husbands took the picture.

Pederson held the ladies’ purses.

In full uniform less than an hour before the game, Carson kissed his wife and kids just outside the Commanders’ locker room. They were kisses for luck.

Then Wentz went out and threw for touchdowns on two of the Commanders’ first three possessions, the second a lovely 7-yard touch pass to Penn State rookie Jahan Dotson. He threw with touch, he threw with pace, and he made smart decisions — at one point he threw three check-down passes in the same drive, which certainly is a personal record. After the fast start, Wentz went dormant for the next two hours.

Then he threw interceptions on consecutive pass attempts early in the fourth quarter.

“That was an ugly stretch,” Wentz admitted.

Mr. Hyde was back ... right? Not quite. Dr. Jekyll addressed the team on the sideline.

“Right after the second one he said, ‘Not everything’s pretty in this league,’” Dotson said. “‘We’ve got to go out there and make a play.’”

Wentz hit Terry McLaurin for the 49-yarder, then hit Dotson with 1:46 left, Dotson’s second score of the game.

That left plenty of time for Jacksonville to drive and score, but the drive stalled because their talented second-year quarterback, Trevor Lawrence, did dumb stuff. Lawrence first was called for intentional grounding for the second time in the game, then launched a desperate, foolish, hopeless, selfish bomb on third down from near midfield with 70 seconds to play, which was, inevitably, intercepted. And that was that.

“He was trying to make a play,” Pederson said with a shrug. “You’re not going to fault the aggressiveness. As coaches, you need to coach that situation.”

Lawrence found Pederson on the sideline. Pederson patted him once on the back, twice in the chest, and said, “We’re gonna keep shooting.”

The same scene unfolded 50 times in the 69 games Pederson coached Wentz in Philly. It must have felt like Groundhog Day.

The Jaguars should have won, and not just because of Wentz’s fourth-quarter interceptions. They dropped a touchdown pass — like Jalen Reagor dropped a touchdown pass. They missed a 37-yard field goal. They had a roughing-the-passer call go against them that even Tom Brady would’ve been ashamed to accept.

But they are, after all, the Jaguars.

While the Eagles were surviving in Detroit, 38-35, Pederson was fighting for his life with a far inferior team. It had to grind his gears.

The last three draft picks the Eagles made before firing Pederson were not good enough to start Week 1. The team Pederson left — the team he built over five seasons — reached the playoffs in 2021 despite being coached by Nick Sirianni, Pederson’s underqualified, overmatched replacement, and being run by Jalen Hurts, Pederson’s underqualified, overmatched backup quarterback.

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Pederson watched it all last year from his boat in Jupiter, Fla., bided his time, and landed a job with the highest-rated NFL quarterback prospect in a decade. He also watched Wentz engineer a trade to Indianapolis, then, as an anti-vaxxer who contracted COVID-19 late last season, sabotage Indianapolis’ chances to reach the playoffs. Disgusted by his Wentz-ness, the Colts flushed Wentz to Washington.

Now, Wentz is in D.C., compiling the Wentz-iest stat lines imaginable: 27-for-41, 313 yards, four TDs, two picks, and a 101.0 passer rating against poor competition. The competition shouldn’t factor here. This was his first game with four touchdown passes since he faced the Rams in Los Angeles on Dec. 12, 2017, the game in which he shredded his knee. That was 58 games ago.

NFC East, take note: Wentz is figuring it out again.

Pederson already has. If you’re going to rise from ashes, you might as well find a deep fire pit. Pederson lives in a gated community outside of Jacksonville, a city in which NFL football is far less important than beaches and golf. He can hide there for years. No one will care. Hell, that handshake and hug with Wentz at the 20-yard line on the west end of FedEx Field was probably the most publicity Pederson was going to get this season.

Until Carson Wentz ripped out his heart.