The Philadelphia Eagles rookie quarterback, Carson Wentz, has been turning heads with his play through his first three career games as we all know. Wentz’s play has given the new look Eagles team life and it’s come to be a shock throughout the league. Many didn’t expect this type of play from Wentz, including majority of draft twitter.
Wentz so far into the first month of the season has won rookie of the week twice, NFC offensive player of the month, and offensive rookie of the month. Wentz’s current stats are 66 completions on 102 passing attempts for a 64.7 completion percentage. He’s thrown for 769 yards, five touchdowns, and hasn’t turn the ball over at all in the first three games.
Draft twitter “experts” like Cian Fahey and Scott Kacsmar (football outsiders) are currently blocking maj0rity of Eagles Twitter, including myself. You see both of these guys viewed Wentz as a bad quarterback prior to the draft and believed he wouldn’t work out in the NFL. Wentz is proving them wrong so far and they will do their best trying to discredit his success to protect their pre-draft narratives on him to protect their reputations of being “draft experts.”
The quarterback position is one of the hardest positions to evaluate and scout for sure. No one is perfect doing these evaluations, but the issue with these guys is they’re afraid to admit they’re wrong.
Kacsmar has labeled Wentz a ‘dink and dunk’ passer, which couldn’t be farther from the truth. He’s a stat geek and evaluates players off of their numbers instead of breaking down and reviewing the entire film before making his analysis, which he admitted to in his blog rant in his reply to Phillyvoice writer, Jimmy Kempski, brilliant piece discrediting Kacsmar’s evaluation of Wentz.
A lot of people are pointing to how Wentz’s passing was versus the Steelers. There was many screen plays throughout the game, which played a role in Wentz’s passes traveling past the line of scrimmage. The funny thing is? Steelers are one of the worst teams defending the screen pass and the Eagles have one of the best running backs in Darren Sproles to utilize the screen game well. The Eagles only utilized this game plan versus the Steelers, not the Bears or Browns, but you know, shame on Doug Pederson and Wentz for running plays that lead your team to victory. Wentz had an average depth of target of 8.8 yards, but dropped to 5.1 yards last week versus the Steelers, furthermore proving that the Eagles specifically game planned on their short passing game to beat the Steelers.
Kacsmar also might not fully understand the concept of a west coast offense, which is the offensive system the Eagles run under Pederson, and an offense Wentz has been running since his junior year at North Dakota State. Kacsmar says the Eagles coaching staff is “coddling” him, but couldn’t be more wrong. Wentz is comfortable in a system he’s proven to have mastered before entering the NFL and the coaches let him audible, adjust the plays, and read the defense at the line of scrimmage on his own. West coast offense thrives on the short passing plays and lives or dies by yards after the catch, however, Wentz has been taking shots down the field as you can see in Jimmy Kempski’s article hyperlinked above. It’s fair to say Kacsmar is protecting his narratives for Wentz just to discredit his success and I fully understand that. No one likes being wrong.
Cian Fahey is worse than Kacsmar. All throughout the draft process Fahey swore up and down Wentz and his hype was completely wrong and that he wasn’t anything to get excited about. The first month of the NFL season has clearly proved that wrong, but Fahey still refuses to give Wentz credit for it.
The most laughable thing about Fahey’s description of Wentz through his first three games is his Wentz and Bengals quarterback, Andy Dalton, comparisons versus the blitz. Fahey described Wentz as looking like Dalton versus the blitz and that made me question if he’s even watched Wentz play in the NFL yet.
Wentz has completed 80.8% of his passes versus the blitz this season, which is second best in the NFL (Matt Ryan passed Wentz yesterday with an 81% rating after playing the Carliona Panthers, while Wentz had a bye) and absolutely astounding for a rookie. Andy Dalton has a 47.8% completion rate versus the blitz and has been known of being horrible versus it since he entered the league in 2011.
Fahey tore apart Wentz’s performance versus the Chicago Bears. He cited their lack of defensive talent and pretty much just used Wentz’s 21 completions on 34 passing attempts for 190 passing yards and one touchdown against him. Wentz’s passer rating in that game was 86.6 and he had two touchdowns dropped by Jordan Matthews and Nelson Agholor, while having 82 receiving yards dropped throughout the game. If none of that is dropped, Wentz finishes 26 completions on 34 passing attempts for 272 passing yards and three touchdowns. That doesn’t show up in the stats, so Fahey wouldn’t of known this.
Fahey praised Dallas Cowboys, Dak Prescott, for his performance versus the Chicago Bears in week three. He cited it as Prescott showing “more to me than Wentz has all season.” No offense to Prescott, who’s playing very well for a rookie quarterback, but that’s laughable. Prescott had 19 of his passes completed on 24 passing attempts for 248 passing yards and one touchdown with a 123.6 quarterback rating. Again, Wentz would’ve outperformed him if the drops hadn’t occurred, but you can’t expect Fahey to know that. Wentz outperformed Prescott earlier that day as well. He threw for 23 completions on 31 passing attempts for 301 passing yards and two touchdowns with a 125.9 quarterback rating.
As you can see, these self claimed “experts” are trying to discredit Wentz’s success to protect their incorrect narratives on him prior to the NFL draft. They refuse to acknowledge Wentz missing majority of his first preseason in the NFL due to injury. They refuse to acknowledge he was named starter after the Eagles traded Sam Bradford right before the regular season. They refuse to acknowledge Wentz didn’t start practicing with the Eagles starting offense five days before the regular season opener. Worst of all, they refuse to acknowledge Wentz playing better than any rookie quarterback has in NFL history.
