Wentz still hungry despite ring, big contract
Wentz remains hungry despite Super Bowl ring, big contract
PHILADELPHIA » Win a Super Bowl. Win a ninefigure contract. In that order. That’s the plan for every NFL player, every year. It will never vary.
Win it all. Become wealthy. Win. Cash. For that, Carson Wentz should be professionally fulfilled. For since the last Eagles season, he has used his right hand to sign a $128,000,000 contract while his left hand was being weighed down by an $11,270 Super Bowl championship ring. But his story is different. And after the first day of training camp Thursday, he let it slip, once more, why it was different.
“Every day, you just try to get better,” he said. “I’ve never been complacent with one win, one championship, none of that.” And then it was spilled, unedited and from the deepest part of his gut, his view of his situation as it hits NFL Year No. 4: “Obviously, there is a bit of a
personal side. I was not on the field back then in the Super Bowl.”
Brandon Graham didn’t score a touchdown in that Super Bowl. Nick Foles didn’t make a tackle. Nelson Agholor did not block a kick. Malcolm Jenkins did not rush for 100 yards. Trey Burton did throw a touchdown pass, but, well, special things can happen. But not everybody did everything. Yet all were proud, deserving world champions. And none have ever had to explain why they didn’t successfully complete every measurable football task to contribute to the Broad Street parade. They did what they did when they did it. And together, that was enough.
Wentz deserves that respect, too. He won’t receive it because he was injured and did not play in that postseason. For that there is the urge to win that respect, and it’s laced somewhere in that competitive streak that has made him a wealthy man.
The Eagles opened training camp Thursday, roughly five months from the next Super Bowl. With a fine blend of age and youth, the relatively recent experience of having won the thing, a rotting division almost assuring five wins and the usual way their fans carry on, they are facing some unofficial championship-or-else mandate.
Even without all of that, Wentz would have been on one.
“I’ll never be the type to settle,” he said. “I’ll always try to push myself to be the best. If I didn’t have that mentality, I probably wouldn’t be here.”
Though professionally courteous enough to have given Foles every reasonable credit for pushing the 2017-2018 Eagles over the top, Wentz has to know that they would not have been close enough to do that without his own earlier MVP candidacy. They were 10-2 and had recently completed a nine-game winning streak when he was injured in Los Angeles in Week 14. And he was the No. 1 reason. He’d passed for 3,296 yards and 33 touchdowns, and was, at that point, virtually assured of his second consecutive Pro Bowl invitation if not an MVP plaque.
Without Wentz, that Eagles team would not have been good enough to win the Super Bowl. As for a list of the reasons why not, feel free to consult Jason Kelce’s postparade rant in which he carefully catalogued every last one.
Wentz was great that year. But because his backup turned out to be a little better, he has a burning urge to show that he, too, can be the winning quarterback in a Super Bowl. And that’s different from being a great contributor to a Super Bowl championship.
Foles is gone, off to Jacksonville as a free agent, the Eagles unable to justify paying two quarterbacks nine figures. It would have been better for them if they’d kept Foles and moved Wentz, but the gap between the two is too narrow to argue. And given the bounty it paid to draft Wentz, the organization already was trapped.
So Wentz was the choice, even if he was unable to end either of the last two seasons healthy. More, he is the only choice, for behind him, the Eagles have invested only modestly in understudies, not one with a notable NFL achievement. It’s Wentz, who has been a touch prone to injury. Then it is Nate Sudfeld, Cody Kessler and his 2-10-0 record as an NFL starter, and rookie Clayton Thorson.
“Well, we were blessed to have Nick for the last two years and the things he accomplished for the team and the organization,” Pederson said. “It’s a new team. You’ve got to coach everybody up. I’ve always been comfortable with Nate. And the guys we have, with Cody, it brings out the best in everybody. This is a great opportunity for them, and especially Nate, to take hold of that backup spot.”
There wasn’t much else the head coach could have said one uneventful practice into a season. So that was the spin. But the reality is the Eagles are counting on Carson Wentz, and Carson Wentz alone, to quarterback a talented team to its second world championship in three years.
So Wentz started camp Thursday healthy, leaner than ever, highly motivated, only 26 years old and surrounded by a cast that should propel him to another MVP candidacy. It’s his time.
The money, he has. But that world-championship part of the standard NFL plan? For that, the Eagles should be quietly thankful, he is not yet satisfied.