Pederson, Wentz ready to move forward
PHILADELPHIA >> The Eagles couldn’t wait to get rid of Nick Foles.
Neither could Carson Wentz, who needs four playoff victories, a Lombardi Trophy, a Super Bowl MVP, a statue and 53 likes from his teammates to prove it was the right thing to do.
Eagles head coach Doug Pederson, who chooses his words carefully, couldn’t quite explain why moving on from Foles was in the best interest of the Eagles moving forward.
“The last two years we have been blessed to have Nick on our roster and our team for what he has been able to do,” Pederson said. “And I am happy for where Nick is and having an opportunity for himself. But this is also a great opportunity for Carson to really regain the type of player he is to what we saw in 2017 and really what we saw in 2018 when he was playing. He is a tremendous competitor. He is a tre
mendous leader and quite frankly I don’t think a lot of that bothers him. He just moves on.”
Later in the interview with beat writers Pederson would say that he’s not a yes man and his job is to coach the players he’s given.
“I was hired to be the head football coach, not the general manager,” is the way Pederson phrased it.
Pederson had a pretty good rapport with Wentz in 2017, the Eagles starting 112. With upgraded weapons, Wentz set the club record with 33 touchdown passes in just 13 games. The rub is that since Wentz threw the record-breaker on torn ACL and LCL ligaments, he hasn’t been the same.
Wentz sat out the first two games last season while the knee healed. When he hit the field, he didn’t do enough to make a dent in the all-important wIn-loss column. The Eagles were 5-6 in his starts.
Wentz was spectacular the second time around against the Dallas Cowboys, playing all 52 snaps, throwing three touchdown passes with no interceptions and producing a 120.3 passer rating.
The Eagles lost, 29-23, in overtime despite three turnovers by Cowboys counterpart Dak Prescott. That would be Wentz’s last game due to what Pederson called a hairline fracture in the quarterback’s back.
Instead of being placed on injured reserve, Wentz was deactivated the last
five games, including the playoffs.
Pederson and the Eagles never fully explained why that was so while in Detroit, quarterback Matthew Stafford played in all 16 games despite the revelation he had multiple fractures in his back.
The Eagles pretended they would keep Wentz and Foles, franchising Foles in a bid to trade him. Then they let Foles walk. He inked a four-year $88 million pact with the Jacksonville Jaguars.
The organizational reaction was to extend Wentz with a massive four-year $128 million team-friendly contract.
Healthy now, Wentz has embraced workout and dietary changes designed to make him stronger and prolong his career.
Wentz won’t have to look over his shoulder with each ache and pain as he did last year. But he’s about to learn that in this market a crazy money contract, status as a second overall selection in a draft and beating Tom Brady and Bill Belichick in the Super Bowl are a tough act to follow.
“I think he’s very equipped to handle it,” Pederson said. “He’s the type of guy who doesn’t let that kind of stuff bother him. Listen, he learned from Nick, from watching Nick and how Nick operated. He had two years of learning. I think this is a great opportunity for him to embrace his new role, and listen, there is going to be criticism, obviously. And there is going to be the comparison game and all that. But the best we can do as coaches and players is block it out and focus on what we’re doing. That’s what you see. He can tune that out pretty easily and just focus on his job and getting ready for his next opponent.”
The Eagles believe the addition of 32-year-old deep threat DeSean Jackson and veteran running back Jordan Howard will help put them over the top.
Rookie second-round picks Miles Sanders, the running back out of Penn State, and JJ Arciga-Whiteside, the receiver from Stanford, give them significant depth, although Sanders missed almost all of the offseason practices with an ailing hamstring.
Wentz, entering his fourth season, still hasn’t played in, much less won a playoff game but is being penciled in for a recordbreaking season.
Pederson has done some of his best work without Wentz, winning the Super Bowl two years ago and prevailing in another playoff game last year.
We’ll know what they can or cannot do this season.
“Carson is excited for this new season,” Pederson said. “It is a new team, there are new guys around him. He is energized, he feels good and I am just excited for that. I am the one that I don’t like to look back. Can we learn from past experiences? Yeah, we can learn from them. But I don’t want to keep going backwards, backwards, backwards. We are forward driven, forward thinking, and that is what he has to do as well.”