Carson Wentz Wanted to Get Away from the Eagles, Now He Has to Face Them Twice in 2022
If you followed the Twitter timeline of Pardon My Take co-host PFT Commenter then you’ll know he was absolutely crushed when his football team the Washington Commanders traded for Colts quarterback Carson Wentz. But now he’s at the stage where he’s fully ready to jump aboard the Wentz Wagon.
Carson Wentz attempted 15 left handed passes last year. if Patrick mahomes does this media goes nuts but instead its crickets because they have a anti Carson bias
— PFT Commenter (@PFTCommenter) March 11, 2022
Beyond the impeccable comedy we’ve been getting from PFT and will be getting over the next year, is knowing that Washington will likely be the final stop of Carson Wentz’s fascinatingly bizarre journey as an NFL starting quarterback. Either he makes it work in Washington, or he’ll get shipped out to another team, this time as a backup quarterback. Knowing his history, Wentz will probably turn down the opportunity to be a backup and leave the NFL either in retirement or to start in another league like the USFL or the XFL.
There’s an interesting history of Eagles quarterbacks going to Washington. In the 1960s they traded Sonny Jurgensen, one of the best quarterbacks in Eagles history, to DC where he continued his Hall of Fame career. And then on Easter Sunday in 2010 they traded Donovan McNabb to Washington in shocking moment in Eagles history. Carson Wentz joins this group of once great Eagles signal callers who swapped green for burgundy (only with a stop in Indy in between) and in Era of constant quarterback changes in the NFL, Wentz will probably be more like McNabb than Jurgensen in DC.
The rise and fall of Carson Wentz is endlessly fascinating. There was a three month period in 2017 where we Eagles fans looked at Wentz the way Buffalo Bills fans look at Josh Allen today. The feeling that we have a Hall of Fame quarterback for the next decade or so and can win multiple Super Bowls with him. Wentz arrived as a potential savior for the franchise and in a way he did. His performance in the 2017 regular season was a big reason they earned the Number 1 seed in the NFC. The only problem is that when the team went on their playoff run Wentz was watching on the sidelines injured. It was Nick Foles who became the savior of the franchise, who became the face of the team’s first ever Super Bowl championship.
Wentz was never the same after that, physically or mentally. Fast forward five years and he’s gone from looking like the future of the NFL to a walking and talking internet meme. His play, personality, alleged behavior in the locker room, it’s made him one of the biggest jokes in the NFL. Since being acquired by Washington very few are suddenly taking Wentz and the Commanders seriously. Wentz himself is posing in lettermen jackets and showed up to his introductory press conference in a hot dog suit. The internet has exploded at every awkward Wentz moment because he keeps surprising you in ways only he can.
His downward spiral from NFL glory will likely end where it started in the NFC East and involving the Eagles. At the end of a disastrous 2020 season Carson wanted out of Philly despite a massive contract and the organization was willing to comply since he’d fallen out of favor with his play and poor leadership skills. Then he gets into an ideal situation in Indianapolis and gets kicked out after a single season which was solid despite a miserable ending in Jacksonville. Even Colts owner Jim Irsay was candid about his thoughts about Wentz, he knew it was a mistake to make him the starting quarterback and made sure to get rid of him quickly. Carson wanted to get away from the Eagles after they drafted Jalen Hurts and benched him in the last month of the season, now he has to deal with them twice a year.
While there maybe some cheers at the start of his return to Philly when they play Washington at the Linc, he’ll be mostly jeered for the rest of the game as an adversary. Once a player has a different uniform that isn’t midnight green, they are a target for boos. Imagine him chucking the ball in the air before being sacked in the endzone, it gets intercepted by Darius Slay for a quick Pick Six as the go ahead score in an Eagles win. The Linc crowd explodes and the next week Ron Rivera announces that Taylor Heinicke will start next week’s game. That will be the end of Carson Wentz’s career as a starting quarterback, it will be the end of a bizarre saga no one saw coming five years ago.