With the Carson Wentz trade on the cusp of happening, it’s hard not to sit back and think about what could have been.
If Wentz never tore his ACL at the LA Coliseum in 2017, would he still be considered a top tier quarterback in the NFL? What if Howie Roseman had done a better job at surrounding Wentz with young talent through the draft, would Wentz have ever gotten to the point where he felt like he needed to get out of Philly? If Wentz didn’t suffer a concussion in his lone playoff start in 2019, would he have won that game and truly solidified himself as the Eagles franchise quarterback?
These are all questions worth pondering.
Of course, none of it matters now. What’s happened has happened and there’s no going back. Wentz will soon be on a different team, attempting to resurrect a once very promising career.
Before Patrick Mahomes, Wentz was primed to be the new face of the NFL. He possessed almost all of the physical gifts that Mahomes does. They were on full display during the 2017 season.
But with the current state of affairs in Philadelphia, and Wentz’s horrendous regression into one of the worst quarterbacks in football last season, what will his legacy look like when he’s gone?
I’m sure the fans who have taken the Twitter to criticize his every action will continue to do so. To them, Wentz was just a blip on the radar, and now it’s on to bigger and better things.
For fans like me who have tried desperately to convince those fans that Wentz is a franchise quarterback, this moment is hard to swallow. I won’t be the one taking a victory lap here whenever the news breaks of Wentz’s trade.
It’s been like an episode of the Twilight Zone, where everything that can go wrong will go wrong. None of it makes a whole lot of sense, but here we are, waiting to hear if Wentz’s trade potentially yields Nick Foles in return. What a turn of events.
The cost of blind loyalty
When the dust settles and all of us Eagles fans have a chance to really look at what’s transpired with our team, I hope that we all realize that this was an organizational failure of monumental proportions.
Getting rid of both Wentz and Doug Pederson in the same offseason was always the doomsday scenario. It should have never happened like this. But perhaps we should’ve always known it was bound to end this way.
Jeffrey Lurie’s admiration for Howie Roseman should’ve never been glossed over, but it’s abundantly clear now who Lurie values the most within the organization. Not the coach who’s made the playoffs three out of his five years while winning a Super Bowl in the process, despite having underwhelming talent and a plethora of injuries each year. And not the quarterback who threw for 81 touchdowns and 21 interceptions while completing 64.5% of his passes from 2017 to 2019.
No. Lurie’s loyalty lies with the man who made their jobs harder.
Loyalty to employees despite their track record will never lead to sustained success. There will be times when everything is going well, like in 2017, but more often than not reality will come crashing down and you’ll realize what your loyalty has cost you. At least that’s how it should be.
Lurie hasn’t come to that realization yet, and I’m not sure how much longer it will take.
With Wentz gone, what happens now?
It seems like Jalen Hurts will be the starter heading into next season. Unless the organization feels like they need to draft a quarterback with their No. 6 overall pick in this upcoming draft — which in of itself would be another organizational misstep.
Nick Sirianni will have his work cut out for him. The team won’t be able to bring in any kind of notable talent through free agency this offseason. It’ll be up to Roseman to hit on these draft picks and find ways to navigate the hellish cap situations he’s put himself in.
The future of the Eagles is almost solely dependent on Howie Roseman now. Roseman hasn’t proved that he’s capable of building a team through the draft. Although we all believed he was a cap wizard, we now know the consequences of that wizardry. You end up being over $50 million over the cap.
As the old saying goes, “you reap what you sow.” Lurie decided to push all of chips into Roseman’s corner, and now Roseman’s eventual failures will become Lurie’s.
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