Adrian Fedkiw
Every rookie quarterback goes through their growing pains and we’ve seen them from Carson Wentz since the bye week.
Grant it, Wentz has no supporting cast and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the struggles have coincided once Halapoulivaati Vaitai took over at right tackle.
Here’s what’s going on. Big V was atrocious against the Washington Redskins and Wentz was seemingly pressured on every play. Wentz subsequently wasn’t much better in that game. Vaitai has still had his struggles, although he’s done a much better job since then. The following week against the Minnesota Vikings, Wentz became impatient and while Vaitai had a solid outing, perceived pressure is what got the No. 2 overall pick in trouble. And when you’re worrying about pressure, the mechanics start to waver. How many times have we seen Wentz’s balls sail over recent weeks? It’s because he’s not setting his feet properly in the pocket.
We saw it again Sunday during the Philadelphia Eagles’ 28-23 loss to the New York Giants among other things.
Let’s start with the interceptions. Wentz threw a pair of them in his first three throws.
On the first interception, Olivier Vernon disengaged from Vaitai as Wentz rolled to his right and converged on him quickly. The pass from Wentz sailed to the crossing Nelson Agholor as he was unable to set his feet. But if you watch the play, there was no need for Wentz to escape the pocket. If he would’ve remained patient in the pocket and waited a second longer for Jonathan Casillas to cover Darren Sproles in the left flat, the throw to Agholor was there.
The Giants did a good job of getting Wentz off of his spot and mixed in disguises to throw him off of his game. On the second pick, the pocket was clean enough for Wentz to deliver the football to the deep crossing Dorial Green-Beckham over the middle. He stepped up in it and the ball simply got away from him.
This should’ve been a touchdown to Matthews, who ran a wheel route. He was WIDE OPEN. Wentz was not only late with the throw, but didn’t loft it high enough to get it over the diving Andrew Adams. The ball also should’ve been hoisted into the back right corner of the end zone, but instead was more toward the middle of the field. If look closely on the second shot, you’ll notice that Wentz’s mechanics were off again as he’s leaning to his left as the ball comes out of his hand.
Here’s Vernon again disengaging from Vaitai and closing in on Wentz quickly. Wentz needs to throw this ball away, plain and simple. Instead, he takes the sack and loses five yards. But this is another example of Wentz escaping the pocket when he really didn’t need to. He’s perceiving pressure when it’s not there.
Ball placement has been a problem for Wentz over recent weeks, not putting the ball on the proper shoulder on screens predominantly. That wasn’t as much of a dilemma on Sunday except on this throw to Ertz on 3rd-and-9. As you can see the ball has high and made it very tough for Ertz to gain yards after the catch. Had the ball been delivered properly, it’s possible that Ertz could’ve picked up the necessary yardage. Not that Ertz was going to break any tackles, which leads me to this fantastic tweet by Jimmy Kempski.
Of 300 players with at least 1 catch this season, Zach Ertz ranks 298th in average YAC, at 1.5. He's 70th out of 70 TEs w/ at least 1 catch.
— Jimmy Kempski (@JimmyKempski) November 7, 2016
And now the play.
The Eagles ran a couple fade routes for DGB inside the red zone on Sunday and he was blanketed by Janoris Jenkins, but Wentz didn’t give his wideout a good enough chance of winning a jump ball situation. His fade tosses were too flat, he needs to put more air under them. They also need to be more towards the back corners of the end zone.
And now the final offensive snap for the Eagles. It was a throw that Wentz made before. Remember his first NFL touchdown?
Wentz 22-of-37 for 278 yards and 2 dime TDs, great touch on both. Nearly threw it 40 times, Doug showed confidence pic.twitter.com/739uTQDwKa
— Philly Influencer (@PHL_Influencer) September 11, 2016
Jordan Matthews ran the slot fade route again, but just to the opposite side of the field this time. Giants defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo had been playing cover-zero and bringing heavy pressure over the first three plays and did so again on fourth down. The offensive play call is designed to get rid of the ball quickly to negate the pressure. The Eagles got man-to-man coverage they had hoped for, but Wentz’s ball placement was a couple yards too far to the right and fell incomplete. The coverage was solid by Trevin Wade, but as seen in Week 1, Wentz was able to beat good coverage with a better throw. That wasn’t the case here and the Eagles lost.
The growing pains with Wentz are going to continue, we just have to remain patient and trust the process.