Another change of defender, born out of despair, was completed (unofficially) well before the start of the NFL league year. And while not entirely similar to the Matthew Stafford / Jared Goff deal, Carson Wentz’s departure for Indianapolis has many of the same strange tones and many risks.
This move was as much about a bad contract and a significant impact on the limit as anything else (like Goff), and while it doesn’t involve two defenders – or nearly as much draft choice compensation as the Lions / Ram switch – it was born of the same origin and has more in common than the Colts or Eagles would like. It involves a recent choice among the top 2 overall, playing the most important position in all professional team sports, which quickly became a cost and box albatross for the team that chose it, which found itself in the unsustainable position of trying to get some kind of broad compensation to compensate for everything that had already been invested in it.
This is hardly a position of strength.
In the case of the Rams, it wasn’t personal between QB and the coach, just that Sean McVay had already done all his best defender whispering and went as far as he felt he could go with Goff, in terms of restoring the attack and play- call and everything else with its strengths. He had taken his course, stabilized, and the cold reality was that Goff had lost his job to stranger John Wolford, not because of his hand injury, but because of his performance. McVay felt that Wolford’s ability to run out of pocket could unlock more offenses than what Goff could offer, and no salary amount or salary cap would change that.
The link between the coach and the quarterback has been broken. McVay told the property directly, the sources said, that he needed an upgrade to the 2021 quarterback, and no matter how complicated it might be from the point of view of the limit, Stan Kroenke understood the seriousness of the situation and the Rams started to do it. exploratory calls at Stafford and Aaron Rodgers and anyone else that McVay deemed best suited to take the attack to higher ground and capitalize on what has become one of the league’s top defenses.
In Philadelphia, at the same time, the Eagles player went up to get a spot after Goff in 2016 was also falling from grace. He didn’t lose his job this season to a young newsboy, but he lost to a very rough rookie, picked in the second round, who no one – including the Eagles – expected to play more than an occasional RPO in 2020. In Philly, it got personal ( because of course it was) between Wentz and coach Doug Pederson. Wentz, according to team and league sources, was falling out of favor with the locker room too, unable to connect with a number of players, acting more in self-interest than would be expected from a defender and franchise leader. The loss and adversity brought out the worst in him, he did not handle the loss of his place to Jalen Hurts with self-confidence and, as reported here a few days after he lost his job, a plethora of general and executive managers of the NFL already predicted the fall of Wentz exodus from Philadelphia after the season, even with Eagles leaders claiming there was nothing to see here and Wentz remains an important part of the organization.
Divorce was approaching, the league knew it, and would always limit the field of suitors and the degree of compensation to a player with an increasing history of injuries, a propensity for upsets and now years away from the days of being mentioned as a candidate the MVP. Things really collapsed when sources said Wentz missed outgoing meetings with Pederson. He did everything possible – passive-aggressive and not – to make it clear that he didn’t want to be part of everything that was going on in Philadelphia, and even after Pederson was fired a week after the season, things between the defender and the organization continued to rot.
And, unlike, say, Lions and Stafford, there was no harmony in the distance, things were not nice and there was a very limited commercial market for Wentz. Super limited. Like, basically, a team: The Colts. Coach Frank Reich did wonders for Wentz in Philadelphia as a technical assistant there, they remained in love with each other and Colts GM Chris Ballard made it clear that he was looking for a veteran, potential franchise quarterback. , believing that the rest of the cast was built to compete for a Lombardi now.
Of course, the Colts lost Stafford even for the Wentz wedding to materialize, and that negotiation with Detroit went in one direction in terms of the number of choices in the first round that Ballard simply would not / could not compete with; he was not offloading at least $ 50 million in salary, as the Rams did with Goff, and he would not continue to play first-round choices at Lions to facilitate such an exchange. Which brought them back to Wentz, with the Bears around, but never really diving, as their only real competition.
This has always been an Eagles / Colts move – predicted here and in many other places in December, when Wentz was eliminated – and that’s where it ended. Of course, with Stafford making such big returns, that would always complicate that process even more, with the Eagles hoping to get at least one surefire choice in the first round, but in the end settling for a third in 2021 and a second in 2022 that would become first round game if Wentz played 75% of the Colts in the attack this year, or played at least 70% (injuries have been a problem) and Indianapolis makes it to the postseason.
It is not a perfect solution for either team, but, like the Rams / Lions exchange, it makes perfect sense in less than ideal circumstances. The Colts needed something different from another Band-Aid a year after Andrew Luck’s shocking retirement, Wentz fits the bill and meets the coach (like Philip Rivers a year ago) and the price is right. They basically rent it out now, year by year, for less than $ 25 million a season – quite affordable for an initial quality QB (if Wentz actually goes back to an initial quality QB, which is very open to debate).
Eagles were always limited to an active suitor and could score 1 and 3 for a player who had no future there, became a problem on and off the pitch and whose presence would hinder his ability to advance in harmony with a young and cheap quarterback , be it Hurts or someone else. It is less than ideal to be stuck in that position for a player in which they invested so much money, time, loot capital and other assets, but that’s where things were when 2020 turned into 2021, and GM Howie Roseman did the best business possibly in my view under that background.
None of this means that the Colts or Eagles will truly benefit in the end. If the Colts leave Wentz in a few years – perfectly possible, given the circumstances that brought us here in the first place – this is not a victory. Philadelphia is clearly looking at 2021 as a redefinition – eating an NFL record limit charge on Wentz as complete proof of this – and the property was indicated at the press conference when Pederson was fired. For them, this is addition by subtraction, and if Wentz gets hurt again, they are only looking at a final choice in the third round and probably a choice in the middle of the second round for someone they thought would be there for their entire career.
It remains to be seen whether any other defenders will have a new start elsewhere in 2021 – Russell Wilson, Aaron Rodgers, Deshaun Watson? – but if so, these transactions would be totally different from the quarterback’s last two moves. The market for them would be almost unlimited, there are no terrible contracts to be negotiated as part of the exchange and the limitations of despair would not be present. But until now, very early in this off-season, despair has been the rule.