HERE COMES CARSON
The Giants will get their first look at rookie QB Wentz, who’s become an instant star with the Eagles
PHILADELPHIA — Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz was booed before he even got out of the airport.
The No. 2 pick in the 2016 NFL Draft declined to sign autographs when he landed at Philadelphia International Airport in April and, as they are known to do, those spurned Eagles fans let him have it. Unlike Donovan McNabb, the last homegrown Eagles franchise QB who was also selected No. 2 and was showered with boos the moment the pick was announced in 1999, Wentz didn’t hear it from the infamously hostile fans until after he arrived in April.
When he set foot in Philly that day, the plan was for the rookie to wait his turn behind incumbent starter Sam Bradford. But days before the start of the season, Bradford was traded to Minnesota and Wentz was thrust into the starting role. Gulp.
Since taking command of firstyear coach Doug Pederson’s offense, Wentz has rocketed to stardom. He’s been called a savior. The future. He started the season 3-0 with wins against Cleveland, Chicago and then Pittsburgh, throwing five touchdowns in those games without an interception and all of a sudden, the Eagles had themselves a legit QB with a bright future.
The fans here? They’ve been absolutely delirious with glee ever since.
They’ve fallen hard for Wentz. Local NBC sports anchor John Clark said in less than half a season on the job, Wentz is already revered “like a god.”
“Immediately, when you saw his success at the beginning, they were calling it Wentzylvania, Carson Country, and I think people have been waiting for that sign that we have someone that can lead us to a Super Bowl,” Clark told the Daily News. “I think they really have attached themselves to Carson Wentz and I think they also sense he has all of the things you need in a franchise quarterback. All the boxes are checked and they can see he has the intelligence, the physical skills, the intangibles, the leadership.” Now they’ll see about his mettle. With the Birds mired in a 1-3 slide after that miracle start, and with the rival Giants up next, Philly fans may be soon ready to clear their throats. The boo birds, like vultures, are always circling Lincoln Financial Field.
After a hot start, the Eagles and Wentz have come back to earth. In his last four games, Wentz has tossed just four TDs and three picks. His worst game as a pro was actually a win powered by the Philly defense and special teams against the Vikings in which Wentz threw for 138 yards and was intercepted twice.
“I need to be better,” Wentz said last week. “I need to play smarter and protect the football.” But now Wentz and the Eagles are officially in a slump following an overtime loss at Dallas that’s been blamed on Pederson’s too-safe play-calling and poor receiver play. Nobody is ready to blame the 23-year-old quarterback yet.
“Carson gets better every week,” Pederson said Monday.
“The numbers may not be there, but the thing is, he’s not turning the ball over,” he said. “The last couple weeks, he’s had a couple interceptions, he’s really protected the ball a little better. He’s understanding how to spread the ball around, using his personnel a little better each week.
“I think just understanding the offense, when
a play comes in, what we’re trying to get done, why I am calling that play in that situation. He’s getting better there. The sideline, which a lot of people don’t see, the communication with his offensive line, his receivers, with myself, with (offensive coordinator) Frank (Reich), is the best I’ve really been around.” Making matters more difficult for Wentz has been his rickety receivers dropping too many balls. It’s been a recurring problem. Last year, the Eagles led the league with 42 drops. Against the Cowboys, Eagles receivers dropped several, none worse than Nelson Agholor’s blunder in the red zone on a third-and-6 that likely would have produced a first down. After the game, Agholor went on a long rant about how “that s--t means nothing.” When you have a rookie QB who threw nine incompletions in the entire game, yes, actually it does mean something. That kind of poor receiver play does little to support a rookie under center and is why the Eagles have been mentioned in trade rumors heading into Tuesday’s deadline. To his credit, Wentz has not blamed his stone-handed receivers. “I have to help them out so it’s not something we’re too worried about,” he said. The Eagles enjoyed a hot start, but now Wentz will be called on to guide them through adversity. While Philly fans got a glimpse of their QB during the good times to start the year, now they’ll see how he operates when things aren’t going well. “When you talk about Carson, you’re talking about a blue-collar quarterback,” Howie Roseman, the Eagles’ VP of football operations, has said. “He fits into this city, into the personality of this city, and you see that when he plays.” Pederson, the former QB who ceded the starting job in Philly to McNabb in 1999, has already compared Wentz to Brett Favre — for the gunslinger mentality he has yet to tap into with a conservative playbook — and Peyton Manning — for the way he prepares and devours film, beginning at 5:30 a.m. every day.
“You hate to label him, but that’s how Peyton prepared,” Pederson said. “That’s how these top guys prepare. He has that now as a young quarterback. That will just carry him throughout his career.”
Backup QB Chase Daniel, who studied under Drew Brees and came with Pederson from Kansas City, has taken the kid under his wing. Like everyone else, he marvels at how intelligent Wentz is and what he picks up in their pre-dawn film sessions.
“He’s extremely smart,” Daniel said. “You have to be smart, but retention, especially in a wordy offense like this, you have to be able to spit it out when the bullets are flying and he has no problem with that.”
Between Pederson, Reich and Daniel, Wentz, a high school valedictorian and twotime national champion at tiny North Dakota State, is being nurtured in an extremely quarterback-friendly environment.
Wentz faces the Giants this week, but Jets fans have a better understanding of what it is to be desperate for a franchise QB like him. Eli Manning has won two Super Bowls for the Giants and provided stability at the most important position on the field for more than a decade, while the Jets are still looking for their first Super Bowl win since 1969.
The Eagles have been waiting even longer. Their last championship was in 1960 and the Eagles are the only team in the NFC East to never win a Super Bowl. For a sports-crazed city unified behind only one team in each of the major sports, it’s been torture waiting. And waiting.
Maybe desperate is an understatement. The Eagles haven’t won a playoff game in seven years. Since 2009, they are second behind only the wretched Browns with six starting quarterbacks to open the season (Cleveland’s had seven).
So here comes Wentz. His No. 11 jersey is the fifth most popular seller in the league, according to the NFL, but it’s tops in two states: Pennsylvania and his native North Dakota. The small town kid from Bismarck, N.D., is now the biggest star in Philadelphia.
Local sportscaster Al Morganti, borrowing the famous line from an early Bruce Springsteen concert review, recently wrote, “We have seen the future of the Philadelphia Eagles and his name is Carson Wentz.”
Of course, there were plenty of Eagles fans who thought the likes of Bobby Hoying or Koy Detmer or Nick Foles or Mike Vick or Bradford all represented some kind of future, too. Hell, even Mark Sanchez had a moment in Philly when he beat the Panthers in a Monday night game two years ago and made local headlines when he showed up at Pat’s and Geno’s for cheesesteaks after the game.
Yep, even for a moment, the Eagles were in love with the Sanchize.
While Wentz isn’t quite cut from the same fabric as local sporting legends like foulmouthed underdogs Lenny Dykstra, Allen Iverson and Buddy Ryan, he’s already won over this city. He dates his high school sweetheart, still drives a pickup truck, has sported a Flyers cap, and has a bit of Tim Tebow in him (he is also deeply religious) as the latest chapter of the Wentz legend was caught on camera Sunday night in Dallas before the overtime defeat. During warmups, he spotted a kid on the sideline in his green No. 11 jersey, got up from his stretches and went over to sign an autograph for him. “God bless you,” Wentz told the kid. The clip was retweeted more than 1,400 times. Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, an Eagles fan from South Philly, saw the video and commented on Twitter, “Simply a nice young man. Go Birds!”
If he didn’t sign for the kid, nobody would have given it a second thought. And fans certainly wouldn’t have booed Wentz for not giving him an autograph like they did six months ago at the airport.
Wentz has to do a lot worse to hear that from Eagles fans now.
But with three losses in four games, that may soon change.