Wentz frustrated by Birds’ 0-2 start

PHILADELPHIA » After being stunned in their season opener in Washington, the Eagles were convinced of one obvious, fixable problem.

Those eight sacks of Carson Wentz?

Don’t let it happen again. So it was that the Eagles would roll in and out of a Week 2 game with the Los Angeles Rams Sunday without Wentz being sacked, unreasonably jolted or repeatedly hurried.

The result: Rams 37, Eagles 18.

Now what? “We’re obviously frustrated,” Wentz said. “You never want to start out 0-and-2. Last week in Washington, starting 0-and-1 is obviously not what we wanted and not how we expect to finish ballgames.”

The Eagles led the opener, 17-0, and were hopeless in the second half. Sunday, they lost a fumble on the third play, quickly fell behind, 21-3, and were competitive if not overwhelming after halftime. Among the reasons has been Wentz’s continuing descent to NFL quarterbacking mediocrity, throwing no touchdown passes and ringing up a 56.5 quarterback raging … down, even, from the 72.5 pip he’d put up a week earlier at FedEx Field.

Correctly and predictably, Doug Pederson insisted afterward that no one player or unit was responsible for an 18-point home-opener dud. But Wentz, who was dinged early and had to leave the Eagles’ only playoff game last season and then complained of back soreness in a truncated training camp has been something other than an All-Star in the last two weeks.

“I thought there were some good plays there, some good decisions,” Pederson said. “I thought he did a good job there handling the run game with some of the checks that we had going on. And he got us in and out of some throws from the standpoint of bad defense into good, positive plays.

“So he handled the game that way. And the one thing that we all have to take a look at as an offense is turnovers.”

And that would be bingo. For there the Eagles were early in the second half, a major rally already percolating, churning to the L.A. 21, when Wentz moved left and tried to find J.J. Arcega-Whiteside in the end zone for the lead … only to be intercepted by Darius Williams.

The Eagles never recovered.

“They made a great play,” Wentz said. “They had it covered pretty well. I got pretty aggressive and tried to force one in there. The guy made ad a great play. I’ve got to be smarter in that situation and overall offensively.”

That Wentz, his coaches and plenty of his teammates ran the have-to-do-better play last week too tended to dull some of its surprise value Sunday. Wentz, though, is convinced the Eagles are close to some solutions.

“There are things we know we can clean up,” he said. “But other than that, we truly feel we are right there. We’re just missing some things, the timing on some things. So we’re not panicking. We know what we’ve got.”