How Carson Wentz fits in Commanders’ offense, between Eagles best and Colts worst

The Commanders have caused quite a stir this offseason when they chased down and landed quarterback Carson Wentz, who was at the helm for the Colts last season.

Wentz, who threw for 5,363 yards last year along with 27 touchdowns and seven interceptions, was acquired for almost the same package the Colts got him from the Eagles last offseason. Indianapolis narrowly missed the playoffs last year, switching from Wentz only to eventually get Matt Ryan, who was looking to leave Atlanta after the Falcons pursued Deshaun Watson.

All that to say: It’s been an interesting merry-go-round for Wentz, who took third place in MVP voting in 2017 and placed in the top five in 2019’s Comeback Player of the Year poll.

Hopes aren’t high for the Commanders and that’s compounded by Wentz’s struggles in training camp, but Ron Rivera downplays the problems.

“There’s a lot of little nuances that we can see and look at and review,” Rivera said, per NBC Sports Washington. “There are some inaccuracies, but it’s not something we’re overly concerned about. You see what’s going on and how things are developing, you see the timing and just get the feel of what’s going on with our concept. So we’re going to keep growing and working on that.”

MORE: Commanders fire Sam Mills III days after induction into late father’s Hall of Fame

Thing is, the Commanders knew what they were getting when they got Wentz, so they probably shouldn’t worry.

Eagles Carson Wentz: The good

With his name becoming synonymous with inaccuracy, it’s easy to forget just how good Philadelphia Wentz was.

Was he overshadowed by the Eagles winning the Super Bowl behind a backup? Absolutely. But his third-place MVP season showed a quarterback with a lot of poise, a huge arm, and some really impressive decisions.

In fact, seven is a sort of magic intercept by Wentz. He had seven picks every year from 2017 through 2019 and a touchdown-to-interception ratio of 3-1 or better in each of those seasons.

In 2017, the name of the game was efficiency, and in 2019, when he was able to radiate more, Wentz threw more than 4,000 yards each year with a completion rate of over 60 percent.

Wentz didn’t always have trouble playing the way he seems to be doing now and you can really see it here in his 2017 highlights. Are you picking raisins? Absolutely, they are highlights. But Wentz was confident and capable of making big plays.

Eagles Carson Wentz: Evil

Then you have 2020 Carson Wentz. In a year that Wentz went 3-8-1 as a starter, he nearly completed more than 57 percent of his passes and threw a career-high 15 interceptions.

It seemed like his recklessness was catching up to him, causing problems on the field.

Wentz was also released a career-high 50 times in 2020, so it was partly an issue on the offensive line. Still, he looked lost under middle, and his turnover-making game share surged to 4.4 percent, a career-high.

All in all, with a career-low QBR of 41.9, this was the season when the Eagles realized it was time to step away from Wentz.

Colt’s Carson Wentz: The Ugly One

If you look at Colt’s Carson Wentz’s numbers, it might be a bit confusing as to why they’re subtracted from him. His completion percentage was back up to 62.4 percent, he threw 27 touchdowns on just seven interceptions and threw for over 3,500 yards.

Wentz himself seemed puzzled as to why the Colts pulled away from him, and his feud with Jim Irsay was really that Irsay made bizarre scathing comments about Wentz.

“I didn’t expect things to turn out the way they did,” Wentz said in March via the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “I thought things were pretty good there. I’ve had great relationships with every single person in this building. I can’t say enough good things about the people over there. It kind of came out of left field.”

Irsay himself called Wentz something the franchise “needed to move away from,” saying “there’s something wrong here” that “needs to be corrected.”

But even with those numbers, Wentz’s time at Indianapolis wasn’t outstanding, but one would think it was. Plays like this and this will be emblematic of Wentz’s time in Indianapolis.

It’s hard to work with and hard to train out of a guy.

Where does Wentz fit in in Washington?

The commanders urgently need the conservative Wentz.

Wentz at his best can move bags and even climb fairly well, but last year he ran into trouble trying to innovate on the fly. This ended in the two catastrophes shown above.

The commanders have guns in the herd. Terry McLaurin Jr., Jahan Dotson and Curtis Samuel present a solid top 3, and Antonio Gibson is a perfectly viable running back. But Wentz can’t try to make himself the focus of the Commander’s offense if they want to be successful.

Rivera and the Commanders staff shouldn’t be too concerned about Wentz’s lack of accuracy early in training camp – they traded for that. A guy with a low completion percentage of 60 percent whose Average Target Depth (aDOT) cannot exceed nine meters per attempt. Trying to make him something he is not is folly.

There’s potential to make this thing work, but the commanders have to accept who Wentz is as a player. Wentz will have to do the same. That was clearly part of the problem in his brief stint in Indianapolis.