Carson Wentz: Job Saver or Franchise Savior?

Injury Concerns and Movement Across Multiple Teams Makes Wentz Risky

If Wentz was the ideal franchise quarterback, he wouldn’t be on his third team in three years, but here we are. Having Colts Coach, Frank Reich, vouch for him and bring him to Indianapolis, only to show him the door less than a year later, doesn’t paint the QB in the best light.

However, despite the comments about him being selfish and a bad teammate it was clear to see that many of his Colts’ teammates did respect him, wishing him well on Twitter. And a lot of the commentary about him being selfish was due to him not being vaccinated, but guess what, neither were others on the team. And neither was Aaron Rodgers who just became the highest-paid player in the NFL. If the Colts ended up making the playoffs, a lot of this selfish commentary wouldn’t have been seen as anything but noise.

But, the Colts didn’t make the playoffs, and that is one of the negatives against Wentz. When he had the chance to lead the Colts to the playoffs, he choked, finishing 17-for-29 with 185 yards, an interception, a fumble, and a garbage-time touchdown, against the lowly Jaguars.

Where have we seen that before? In 2017, Washington had a win-and-your-in game against the Giants in Week 17, and Kirk Cousins went 20-for-37 for 158 yards with no touchdowns and three interceptions. What happened a few months later? Cousins signed a three-year, $84 million deal with the Vikings. Now Cousins choked and has gone on to be serviceable for the Vikings, so Wentz could do the same for Washington.

I know we wanted a savior, but at least we’ll get competent QB play, hopefully, unless Wentz continues to play hero ball. There have been countless times where Wentz has tried to make a play when there is nothing there. Exhibit A is below. You can’t hold on to the ball for that long, and you absolutely can’t make that throw in a tie game with under two minutes remaining.

https://twitter.com/NFL/status/1454902448745639939?s=20&t=hU6KelQRY-Y8HQt49pQOcA

Now, Wentz did have 33 “money throws” last season, which ranked ninth in the NFL, but with those throws that take exceptional athleticism, we also see a player taking too many chances and making foolish mistakes. Wentz’s accuracy rating last season was 7.2/10, according to Player Profiler, which ranked 31st in the NFL.

He also had the sixth-worst on-target percentage along with the seventh-highest bad throw percentage. That’s not a great combination.

Some of that can be blamed on his offensive line, as he faced the sixth-most number of pressures in 2021, but a lot of it is just who he is as a player.

Coming out of college, two major concerns were Wentz not being nimble in the pocket and being late on short throws, leading to misses. Last year, his completion percentage under duress was 37.7% which is 28th in the league, compared to a solid 54.5% for Heinicke (3rd in the NFL).

The final area of concern for Wentz is his durability. Although he played all 17 games last season, he missed time with a torn ACL in 2017, had a back injury in 2018, a head injury in playoffs in 2019, and had foot surgery in 2021. The saving grace is if he does happen to miss time, Heinicke could step in and effectively run the offense.

So what do we have in Wentz? A flawed quarterback who can hit the deep throw and provides the biggest upside the team has had since Kirk Cousins. Could he lead us to the playoffs and possibly save Ron Rivera’s job? I think so.

Is it likely he will end the franchise’s long overdue, much-anticipated wait for a franchise quarterback? Don’t count on it. If you go in with the right expectations, you can’t be disappointed. Right?