This weekend’s NFL slate features something I never thought I’d see again: Carson Wentz squaring off against the Eagles. Wentz has faced his old team just once as a starter back in the 2022 season with Washington. In the matchup down in Maryland, the Birds’ defense destroyed Wentz, sacking him a whopping nine times and shutting down the former face of their franchise with ease.
2022 was the end of Wentz’s time as a go-to starting quarterback, but he’s bounced around in good systems since, going to Sean McVay’s Rams to Andy Reid’s Chiefs and, to a lesser extent, Kevin O’Connell’s Vikings. Being a journeyman isn’t what Wentz envisioned would become of him as a pro when the Eagles traded him away in the 2021 offseason to Indianapolis, but nothing about Wentz’s career makes much sense, does it?
There isn’t too much I need to rehash, right? Wentz arrived in Philadelphia in 2016 as the No. 2 pick and looked like a Messianic figure for the Birds early in his rookie campaign. He topped that with ease in his second year in the NFL, playing like the woulda/shoulda/could MVP of the whole league. The city went wild for the guy, myself included. Wentz was going to be the Eagles’ franchise quarterback for at least a decade and have the Birds in contention nearly every single season.
Well, the Eagles have been in true contention most years since then, but it’s not due to him. That fateful day that Wentz tore his ACL in Los Angeles during the 2017 season irrevocably changed his career and the trajectory of the Eagles’ franchise. Nick Foles came in and saved the day, became a folk hero and Wentz never suited up in the postseason. A similar situation played out the following year before Foles nearly guided them back to the promised land once more. Wentz seemed to finally figure things out as the unquestioned guy again in 2019, but a devastating concussion knocked him out of the Eagles’ Wild Card Round game against Seattle.
Enter Jalen Hurts the following spring, preceding a season from hell for Wentz where he looked like one of the game’s worst signal-callers in 2020. The Eagles ripped the proverbial Band-Aid off for Philly’s former golden boy and have spent every year in the playoffs since with a new shiny Lombardi Trophy to show off as well.
I was angry with how awful Wentz looked in 2020, was ready to buy into Hurts and wanted him gone. He meant the world to the city for a hot minute, so it’s still messy in retrospect. On a personal level, nearly a decade ago, one of my first posts for Bleeding Green Nation detailed how watching Wentz and a new era of Eagles football in 2016 truly helped while I battled depression after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I stand by everything I got off my chest then. Wentz and the Birds were what I desperately needed to cling on to in order to find some hope in a weird time and place for me. My life, like that of every Eagles fan out there, changed forever when the team won the Super Bowl the following season and Wentz’s MVP-caliber performance for months was inarguably a gigantic reason why. If Wentz doesn’t lead them to an 11-2 record and put them on a path to home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, they don’t win it all and I’m not even writing this story.
It won’t be long before the 10th anniversary celebrations roll around for the Eagles’ first (but not last…) Super Bowl champion team. When those festivities happen, I hope Wentz is present and isn’t booed or anything along those lines. Go wild rooting against him on Sunday when he’s playing for the Vikings and hope he throws five picks and gets sacked 10 times, obviously, but let’s not pretend we weren’t all wrapped up in his promise during that oh-so-special 2017 season.
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