Like Deshaun Watson with the Texans, Carson Wentz has the power with the Eagles. Good luck, Nick Sirianni. | Mike Sielski

Deshaun Watson has requested a trade from the Houston Texans, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, which is how such matters are usually according to’d in the NFL. Around here, there is only one appropriate prism through which to view this news: what it tells us about the Eagles and Carson Wentz. And what it tells us is this: The reporting and leaks and whispers detailing and hinting at Wentz’s apparent disgruntlement with the Eagles and, in particular, with former coach Doug Pederson should not be surprising. They are words and actions customary to the men who play the most powerful position in football, maybe the most powerful position in all of sports. Wentz has been wielding them since his benching in early December. Watson is wielding them now.

That parallel, between Watson’s trade demand and Wentz’s apparent unsettledness, is sure to strike a segment of the Eagles fan base as ridiculous, given how the 2020 season played out for the two quarterbacks and their teams. The Texans went 4-12 — they were worse than the Eagles, which shows how hard they worked at being bad — and are regarded as one of the bigger messes in the NFL, if not the biggest. In fact, it is a testament to how much of a mess they are that they went 4-12 even though Watson had a marvelous season, completing more than 70% of his passes and throwing for 33 touchdowns and a league-high 4,823 yards. According to Schefter, Watson offered input on the Texans’ search for a new general manager, a search that resulted in the hiring of Nick Caserio, and was angered when team owner Cal McNair didn’t take that input into consideration. Hence, the trade request, and the general default reaction to it is easy to surmise: Can anybody blame Watson for wanting out?

Wentz’s situation — or, more accurately, the perception of it — is different. The Eagles went 4-11-1, and there is consensus among those who aren’t Wentz or his close personal friends that he was the primary reason. He wasn’t the team’s only problem, but he was its biggest. So the revelations of his actions and behavior behind the scenes — his stubbornness, his passive aggressiveness, his tug-of-wars with Pederson over the direction of the offense — haven’t been greeted with the same nods of agreement and understanding that Watson’s defiance has. Watson comes off as more sympathetic; Wentz, as selfish.

» READ MORE: Can Nick Sirianni & his boy-band staff create harmony in Philadelphia Eagles locker room? | Marcus Hayes

At the micro level, that reaction and that distinction make perfect sense. Wentz just finished a season in which he led the NFL in interceptions with 15, fumbled 10 times, was sacked 50 times, and won three of his 12 starts, and he has the stones to complain to Jeffrey Lurie and Howie Roseman about the way Pederson is calling plays and coaching him? What makes him think he’s in a position to do that?

Here’s what: From a broader, bigger-picture perspective, Watson and Wentz are in exactly the same place, with exactly the same amount of leverage. Each of them is, or is supposed to be, an NFL starting quarterback. We spend so much time debating who’s better than who within that exclusive fraternity that we overlook that there are just 32 of those jobs in the entire world. These men, relative to the league’s backups and anyone who aspires to be an NFL starting quarterback, are the elite of the very elite, and they know it.

Rest assured, Wentz doesn’t look at his awful 2020 season and believe that his career is on the decline or that he was never that good to begin with. He looks at 2017, 2018, and 2019 and believes that his performances in those years are the true measure of the player he is and will be again. When Sam Bradford learned that the Eagles had made two trades so they could draft Wentz in 2016, he didn’t say, Well, golly gee, I guess they found a better option. I’ll just be a good soldier and help the new kid as much as I can. Nope. He said, You freaking guys just gave me a new contract, and now you want someone else. Fine. I’ll go somewhere else and show you. Trade me. Every NFL starting quarterback thinks this way. All of them, from Patrick Mahomes to Wentz to Watson to Gardner Minshew, think of themselves as the best of their profession, because they are. As far as they’re concerned, they’re all in the same club.

And Watson and Wentz have an additional trump card: They’ve gotten paid. Each is on his second, more lucrative contract. Wentz signed a four-year extension, which could pay him as much as $128 million, in 2019; Watson and the Texans agreed to a four-year deal worth as much as $156 million last year. Until those contracts approach or enter their final seasons, Wentz and Watson are holding hammers over their respective teams’ heads. No, the Texans technically don’t have to trade Watson, and the Eagles technically don’t have to trade Wentz. But if they don’t, they risk looking foolish and losing games for failing to satisfy the players whom they’ve already designated as the most valuable for their franchises. They risk embarrassing themselves, more than they already have.

That’s the gamble for any NFL team when it commits so much money and salary-cap space to a quarterback: The power dynamic changes. It shifts from the team to the player. The Eagles are, to no small degree, at Carson Wentz’s mercy now. Welcome to Philadelphia, Nick Sirianni, and make sure you understand who your real boss is.