PHILADELPHIA -- He'll be fine.
That's my initial reaction whenever somebody starts wringing their hands about Carson Wentz's ability to stay healthy. Not that the concerns are not legitimate -- keeping the quarterback healthy is the No. 1 key for every NFL team, and the Eagles have failed at it for two consecutive seasons.
As a criticism, it is fair to point out the fact that Wentz, as good as he was when he was on the field, wasn't on it when the games mattered most. That needs to change in order for the Eagles to win another title before another 57 years have passed.
At the same time, pointing out Wentz's injury history as a means of criticism is different from pointing to it as if it wields some sort of predictive power. The history books are filled with young quarterbacks who suffered injuries early in their careers and then remained mostly healthy thereafter.
Matthew Stafford got the "injury prone" label after missing 16 games in his first two seasons in the NFL. He'll enter this season having started 131 in a row. Michael Vick missed 12 games in his first three seasons, but missed just two in his next three before his two-year hiatus due to his dogfighting conviction. Drew Brees has missed just one start due to injury since undergoing surgery to repair a torn labrum after his fifth year in the league.
This is hardly scientific, but besides Sam Bradford, can you name a quarterback in recent memory who had his career dramatically shortened or who failed to live up to his potential because he could not stay healthy? We'll see what happens with Andrew Luck, but the guy was back playing at an MVP level last season.
All that being said ...
One legitimate unknown about Wentz is whether he can get back to the dynamism of his 2017 season while playing with a body that has lived a hard life the last couple of years and also understanding what he needs to do to avoid the sorts of encounters that tore up his knee and crunched his back.
I'm thinking in large part about his performance on third down, particularly in the third-and-long situations in which he was nothing less than a game changer in 2017. That season, Wentz accounted for 14 first downs in third-down situations with at least 10 yards to go. Of his 33 pass attempts on third-and-10 or more, 12 went for first downs. Last year, he threw for four on 18 attempts.
This is a notable thing because Wentz's performance on third down in 2017 was one of the biggest reasons the Eagles were in position to claim home-field advantage for their Super Bowl run. In their 43-35 win over the Rams, they converted a third-and-10 and a third-and-11 on two scoring drives that ended up getting them 10 points. Their 30-17 win over the Redskins in Week 1 included a 58-yard touchdown pass to Nelson Agholor on third-and-12, plus third-and-10 conversions on two field-goal drives. Their 28-23 win over the Panthers included a third-and-16 conversion that extended a touchdown drive late in the third quarter. Wentz's third-down performance was quite literally the difference between victory and defeat.
It's probably unrealistic to expect the Eagles to ever be as good on third down as they were in 2017, when half of all the passes that Wentz threw went for first downs. There's certainly reason to hope that Wentz can do more of what he did that season now that he is a year removed from knee surgery. Yet a lot of what he did that season was set in motion by his ability to extend plays outside the pocket and stand tall inside of it, all while keeping his eyes locked downfield instead of flitting toward the pass rush.
So, yeah, maybe the health thing is a legitimate thing to wonder about. More so than the prospect of injuries themselves, the big unknown is what Wentz's identity will be as a quarterback now that he has a couple of serious entries on his medical chart and an employer that wants him to err on the side of self-preservation.
He's going to be fine. He's also going to evolve. Maybe he gets back to his third-and-long heroics. Or maybe he puts himself in fewer of those situations.
Sports on 08/06/2019