The need for speed
If there’s been one thing missing from the Eagles offense since the drafting of Carson Wentz, it’s a reliable WR2 who can take the top off a defense. Dorial Green-Beckham was, well, the less said about that, the better. Torrey Smith was inconsistent and Mike Wallace had his season ripped from under his feet.
The team went out of their way to bring DeSean Jackson home this offseason, giving Wentz the lightning rod needed to allow him to let it rip with confidence. The 32-year old still averaged over 18 yards per reception last year, adding a further 774 to his tally along with 4 touchdowns.
According to PFF, Carson Wentz landed a 91.1 passer grade on hitch routes last year, while DeSean Jackson averages a receiving grade of 91.3 on that exact same route.
When diving into Jackson’s 2018 tape, playing for a team who led the NFL in passing offense, it’s hard not to get excited about what Jackson’s route-tree, that is far more refined and a lot deeper than it was during his first stint with the team, and how that links with Carson Wentz.
Jackson isn’t just a threat to take the top off a defense that has to be respected, but he can wreak havoc underneath if given too much respect. It’s this kind of ability to manipulate a secondary that the Eagles loved in Alshon Jeffery (although a different way) and having both on the field at the same time is just a terrifying prospect for a quarterback who ranked seventh in deep-ball accuracy last season.
Maturity
Even when battling the setbacks mentioned in the first section, Wentz developed. His mobility (as shown below) was sorely hampered in 2018, not just from a scrambling and Houdini perspective, but simple maneuverability inside the pocket almost completely disappeared.
But that somehow didn’t stop Carson Wentz from realizing his own limitations and completing a career-high 69.6% of passes. Not only that, but per SIS, Wentz completed 81% of passes vs base defenses, leading the NFL in that category.
His development as a passer not only helped facilitate a historical season for Zach Ertz, but also shed the skin of ‘not being clutch’. With several game winning drives to his name last year, Wentz was able to get that hump off his back and prove that he can lead the offense when it counts, even if severely hampered.
Off the field…
But Wentz hasn’t just had to develop on the field. After ‘that’ article came out at the beginning of the offseason, calling his character into question using anonymous sources, Wentz had to set the record straight, one way or another, and did so in the most eloquent and level-headed way possible.
“I know who I am, first of all. I know how I carry myself. I know I’m not perfect. I know I have flaws,” he said during a sit-down interview with a small group of reporters at the Eagles’ practice facility recently. “So I’m not going to sit here and say it was inaccurate and completely made up. I’m not going to do that. But at the end of the day, I will say our locker room is really close. If there were guys that had issues, in hindsight, I wish we could have just talked about them. But, again, I don’t know how that all happened and everything with that.”
“You go through the [ACL] injury, and you’re just 100 percent determined to get back, that’s, like, what my mind is on. And looking back, were there things that maybe I neglected as a teammate and as a friend because I was just so determined and that’s all that mattered?” Wentz said.
Whether the article that ripped Wentz to shreds held weight or not, the Eagles QB responded with a level of humility that not many would’ve expected. I for one wouldn’t have been so calm about an article that claimed how selfish I was at times.
Wentz has come a long way since being drafted out of North Dakota State in 2016. Now a $128M man, he’s gone from an FCS standout to a would-be MVP in 2017, before having to battle adversity one year later. Now, he’s a leading MVP candidate who is in the perfect situation to dominate in a way that should put him at the forefront of the MVP conversation if all goes to plan.
