Things aren’t so sunny in Philadelphia this week. The Eagles are off to an 0-2-1 start after losing definitively to the Washington Football Team, getting trounced by the Los Angeles Rams, and tying with the (also 0-2-1) Cincinnati Bengals. Yeah – it ain’t been good. Imagine being the sports writer that predicted that the esteemed Philadelphia Eagles would win the NFC East this year – I bet that sports writer probably feels stupid as hell.
It was me. I am that sports writer.
What’s worst of all is that once-MVP contender Carson Wentz has been playing in some elite bad quarterback company. There’s no other way to say it – he’s been bad. We’re talkin’ Sam Darnold, Dwayne Haskins, Jeff Driskel levels of bad. Wentz is 29th in the league in QBR at 35.5. He’s dead last in the NFL in passer rating at 63.9. And, he only has three touchdowns on the season. That’s right – Nick Foles, who is now with the Chicago Bears, has just as many touchdowns as Wentz on the season, despite only completing 16 passes (to Wentz’s 79).
I’m not sure exactly what is going so wrong for Wentz or why, but it’s gotten to the point that head coach Doug Pederson is already fielding questions about whether or not he’s going to bench Wentz.
For now, Eagles coach Doug Pederson won’t hear of benching Carson Wentz in favor of rookie Jalen Hurts, even though Wentz is among the worst quarterbacks in the NFL in several categories.
“No. You don’t go there. That’s a knee-jerk reaction,” Pederson said Monday morning on his weekly radio show on SportsRadio 94.1WIP. “That’s a reaction to the aura that’s out there. That’s not what we believe internally. We’re going to continue to get better.
People on Twitter are even starting to ask whether or not the Eagles would’ve won that Super Bowl in 2017 if Wentz was healthy and they didn’t have to turn to Big Dick Nick for that run.
It just seems insane on the surface – this is a guy who was a legitimate league MVP candidate a couple of seasons ago. We had quarterback questions about the Bears, the Chargers, the Dolphins, and the Football Team…but the Eagles were NOWHERE to be found in that discussion. This just seems to have hit right out of left field.
But, maybe his struggles shine some light on the drafting of Jalen Hurts. That was an eyebrow-raiser back in the spring, but maybe the Eagles brass saw this coming and came up with a contingency plan. Just playing devil’s advocate here, but we’re already seeing plays with Hurts at the helm sprinkled into the Eagles’ game plan.
First touch for Jalen Hurts in an Eagles uniform results in a first down.#Eagles pic.twitter.com/h3LrQxZeav
— Thomas R. Petersen (@thomasrp93) September 27, 2020
Hurts has a solid skillset – I actually liked him for the Titans back in the spring. He’ll get a chance to start at some point, either in Philly or with a team that values his potential and shells out the draft picks for him. He’s a winner – no doubt about that, but the Eagles need to make up their mind about this situation. What’s the ol’ football cliché? “If you have two quarterbacks, you don’t have any.” That doesn’t seem to work in the NFL.
Wentz still has a chance to turn it around, but with nearly a quarter of the season in the books, the Eagles may be running out of time to get things right. What do they have going for them, though? The NFC East looks like a hot mess express. Washington is currently on top of the division at 1-2. Per the eye test, it looks like it’s Dallas’ division to lose, but there’s still a ton of football to play, especially in that division.
Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD and #BeBetter. “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, Nashville, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley
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