What do the Philadelphia Eagles do at quarterback?

The Philadelphia Eagles may be facing another tough quarterback decision.

Imagine you are Philadelphia Eagles general manager Howie Roseman. On the heels of defeating the best teams in NFL history, the New England Patriots, to win a Super Bowl after building a great roster with weapons on both sides of the ball, you have a problem at hand. Who is your future quarterback: Carson Wentz or Nick Foles?

Foles was the one who captured the Eagles their Super Bowl victory, winning MVP honors for the game as he saved the season. Wentz went down with an injury in Week 14 — amid an MVP-caliber season, it should be noted — and Philadelphia needed a new quarterback; Foles took up the mantle. He was serviceable in his first two games and bad in the next two. But once the playoffs arrived, he was magical.

In a 38-7 trouncing of the Vikings, Foles was one of the most efficient quarterbacks in the league. But even with that, doing the same against the vaunted Patriots was not going to be easy. One more remarkable performance and the “Philly Special” later and the quarterback got the city a Lombardi Trophy.

The other side of the coin was Wentz, the player who led the Eagles to that point. He emerged as one of the two top prospects in the 2016 NFL Draft along with Jared Goff. The Rams and Eagles traded into the top two picks, Goff going No. 1 to the former and Wentz following and making his way to Philadelphia.

As a rookie, Wentz looked solid but it was his sophomore NFL season in which he exploded. The North Dakota State product torched almost every defense he faced before the injury that made way for Foles to make the playoff charge and Super Bowl run.

The Eagles took a year, in essence, but their decision was to move forward with Wentz, and unsurprisingly so. Foles has bounced around the league since and it initially seemed that they’d made the right decision as Wentz looked good in 2019. Things have gone decidedly in the opposite direction this year, however.

Who was Carson Wentz prior to the Philadelphia Eagles’ 2020 season?

Heading into the NFL from the NDSU program in FCS, Wentz had all the arm talent in the world. He could make any throw on an NFL field for the most part but one of the main things that held him back was his ability to read a defense and process it quickly.

In PFF’s scouting report on Wentz coming into the 2016 draft, they described him as such, “Slow to process in the passing game. Will be late on short and intermediate throws, but arm strength bails him out. Will this still work at the next level?”

During his first few seasons in the NFL, it seemed as though the worries that everybody had about Wentz weren’t so bad. Wentz’s arm strength was on full display and, while he still had some struggles with picking up pressure and reading NFL defenses quickly, those issues gradually got better and better.

The only thing that started to worry people was Wentz’s injury history. Wentz had the ACL/LCL that sidelined him for a long while, which allowed Foles to take over his job. He also had back problems, which were bad enough to force him to the bench, once again allowing Foles to take over. Despite all the injury problems, Wentz still played quality football.

However, with all the talent that Wentz has, he still has struggled at times, but never more than he has in the 2020 season.

Where Carson Wentz has struggled for the Philadelphia Eagles in 2020

In this first video ascribing the quarterback’s problems, Wentz does a couple of things wrong. Wentz targets DeSean Jackson near the sideline as he runs a comeback route that gets him open a decent amount. One way Wentz squandered this opportunity was throwing an inaccurate ball to the inside of Jackson, which resulted in the pass almost being intercepted by Kevin Pierre-Louis as well as Fabian Moreau.

The other way Wentz messed this up was because he completely locked onto Jackson throughout the entire route and never once looked off anybody.

On another play, Wentz has two options as he can target either Dallas Goedert or Alshon Jeffery. Jeffery motions over from the left side of the ball over to the right side and runs a quick out route that gets him a yard past the first-down marker. Jeffery had leverage on the cornerback and, if Wentz threw the ball to Jeffery right when he cut, it would have been an easy first down.

If Wentz didn’t like that look, he also had Goedert to work with as well. Goedert gets an outside release on Karl Joseph and has plenty of grass to work with to his right and ahead of him — not to mention the fact that Joseph is 5-10, 200 pounds while Goedert is 6-5 and 256 pounds.

Even with two great options winning their matchups, Wentz botched the opportunity. Wentz passed on both Goedert and Jeffery and instead worked backside where he ended up getting sacked by Olive Vernon because he didn’t get rid of the ball quick enough.

For the final play we’re looking at with Wentz, it’s a bit of an odd one. He had an easy completion to his left to his rookie receiver in Jalen Reagor but instead looked off him and looked to his running back, who was the check-down. Unfortunately for Wentz, he was a bit late rotating down to his check-down option as he was hit from behind and throw a pop-up, which allowed the Browns to return the ball for a touchdown.

What Carson Wentz has done right in the 2020 season

One thing that Wentz was known for being good at coming out of college was his arm talent and throughout this season he has still shown decent moments of arm talent.

In this video, he showed off his arm talent. Goedert gets a nice release off the line of scrimmage and the only man who can stop him from scoring is Troy Apke, who is playing safety. Wentz sees this and throws the deep ball but ends up throwing it to the left of Godert, allowing him to score a touchdown.

On another play, you can once again see Wentz show off his deep ball as well as his touch. Travis Fulgham, who is at the bottom of the screen, wins to the outside quite decisively and creates separation downfield, which allowed Wentz to throw a beautiful pass that only Fulgham can catch

What other quarterback options do the Philadelphia Eagles have?

Outside of Wentz, the Eagles have two backup quarterbacks, Nate Sudfeld and Jalen Hurts. Sudfeld has been with the Eagles since 2017 but the realistic starting option for them outside of Wentz would be Hurts. Philly drafted the young quarterback in the second round of 2020 after Hurts had quality seasons with both Alabama and Oklahoma.

The Eagles could also target a different quarterback in the 2021 NFL Draft, even though it would be an unlikely outcome. Given their investment already in the position and the notion that they won’t be able to target the likes of Trevor Lawrence or Justin Fields, it’s hard to believe they’d make a move such as that.

What should the Philadelphia Eagles do with Wentz and the QB spot?

The last time the Eagles had to make a quarterback decision between Foles and Wentz, they had much more information to work with. The Eagles saw what Wentz did and were presumably more comfortable with the choice of the young quarterback. This time around, it’s not as cut and dry.

One thing that Philly needs to ask themselves is do they think that they can win now and win the NFC East or if that’s not the case. If Philly believes they can win this season, they may have to keep Wentz in because Hurts may not be that much of a better replacement.

If the Eagles think they can’t win this year, then they might want to bring in Hurts to replace Wentz to develop him and see what they have in the rookie; but there’s a pivotal caveat. If Philadelphia ends up benching Wentz, it’s going to hard to bring him back off of the bench to replace Hurts because his confidence will be shot. If Hurts does end up becoming good, it’s going to make the Eagle’s job of trading Wentz away a lot harder because they lost their leverage.

Whatever happens with the Eagles quarterback situation, it will not be an easy choice for whoever makes the call.