Little league Cubs set to take on the world
Veteran Foles working with the starters, but third-year QB looks strong in camp
Coming off their first Super Bowl championship, the Philadelphia Eagles still aren’t certain who their starting quarterback will be in Week 1.
At least, officially.
This year, that uncertainty is a good thing.
The Eagles will start either a fast-rising superstar entering Year 3 in Carson Wentz, or the reigning Super Bowl MVP in Nick Foles, who in emergency relief inexplicably strung together one of the great series of playoff performances by a QB in NFL annals.
But if you’re into betting, you’d be dumb after Thursday not to put your money on Wentz.
He’s the Eagles’ entrenched long-term No. 1 QB, but is coming off reconstructive knee surgery after a nasty injury last December.
Despite reports and speculation suggesting Wentz would or at least might open Eagles camp Thursday on the physically unable to perform (PUP) list, Wentz was good to go.
The club’s medical staff cleared Wentz on Wednesday to take part in individual and full team drills for camp. He can partake in all but one thing.
“Just contact,” Wentz told reporters after practice. “That’ll be the next step, the next goal.”
It was the Eagles’ first practice of training camp on a somewhat steamy, sun-soaked summer afternoon at the Eagles’ NovaCare Complex
Wentz worked entirely with second-stringers. Foles took all the reps with the starters.
You would never know there was anything wrong with Wentz unless you noticed the big black brace supporting his left knee. He ripped passes short and medium and even looked fast and nimble one time while rolling out hard to the right on a waggle. On that play, he threw a strike to his receiver.
About the only thing Wentz seemed to do wrong while on the field was try to put on another quarterback’s helmet when positional drills began.
“Felt great,” the 25-year-old said of his first full practice of 2018. “Obviously, there were a limited number of reps today, kind of a shorter practice. But it felt great just to be back out there, be under centre, be with the guys again, whatever capacity it was today. I felt good.”
Eagles head coach Doug Pederson cautioned Wentz remains on a recovery timetable. Asked if Thursday’s practice is an indication Wentz will take part in 11-on-11 drills throughout camp, Pederson said no.
“We’re going to continue to monitor his progress, obviously, day by day and go off of how he feels,” Pederson said. “We’ll continue to sprinkle him in from time to time.
“I’m not going to push him or get him out there sooner than he has to. I want to make sure that he’s 100 per cent.”
Wentz was having an MVPcalibre season last year, when on Dec. 10 in Los Angeles he tore up his left knee while scoring a touchdown.
At the time of his injury, Wentz had thrown for an NFL-leading 33 touchdowns against seven interceptions and 3,296 yards. He also was blowing away all other NFL QBs with a third-down passer rating of 123.7 and might have been the front-runner for league MVP.
Alas, Wentz tore not only the anterior cruciate ligament, but the lateral collateral ligament as well, and suffered other softtissue damage. He underwent reconstructive surgery days later.
While Wentz hobbled around on crutches over the next two months, Foles, who began his career in Philly in 2012, stunningly sprang into stardom in his own right. He played like a hall of famer throughout the 2017 playoffs in leading the Eagles to their first Super Bowl victory.
Hence Philly’s sudden embarrassment of riches at quarterback right now.
Wentz, the No. 2 overall draft pick in 2016, remains entrenched as the guy. Pederson and GM Howie Roseman repeatedly have underscored that fact since December.
Until Thursday the big question had been when can Wentz safely return to game action? And could he really be ready by the regular-season opener on Sept. 6 against Atlanta?
Wentz has exactly six weeks minus a day to continue his recovery. Seems like enough time, given where he’s at. But who knows?
To put Wentz’s lightning-quick recovery into perspective, know that it often takes up to a year, sometimes substantially longer, for top-end athletes to properly and fully recover from such knee damage. NFL running back Adrian Peterson remains the ultimate outlier, famously recovering in less than 10 months from ACL and medial collateral ligament tears suffered in 2011 to rush for one of the league’s best single-season yardage totals (2,097) in 2012, his most prolific year as a pro.
If Wentz starts the opener, he’ll have returned to play in less than nine months.
Bear in mind that Wentz’s knee isn’t recovering on a steady incline. There are ups, downs, good days and bad days.
“Some days, it’s a little more sore, some days it feels great,” he said. “That’s just what rehab is, that’s just what injuries are. But so far, it’s been pretty good.”
Quarterbacks in some ways are like baseball pitchers in that the smallest of compensations for injury in their ball-delivery motion have the potential to mess up the works. I asked Wentz if he paid special attention to that, especially early in his return to throwing.
Of course he did. Wentz is dialed-in and leaves nothing to chance.
“Going back early in the rehab process, I got the camera out and just dissected my mechanics from, really, the moment I could start throwing, just to make sure everything looked good,” he said.
What’s more, Wentz said he joined up with his off-season mechanics coach to help with this very thing.
“From early on I made sure I was all solid,” Wentz said.