Where Did the Carson Love Wentz?

Bobby Koch Posted On May 15, 2019

These days, to be a New York Giants fan, you must be a glutton for misery. Maybe that’s why I’m about to defend my second NFC East rival quarterback of the off-season. First it was Dak Prescott, now it’s Carson Wentz.

Recently, Ryan McDowell mentioned that Kyler Murray was currently a top eight dynasty quarterback according to ADP. In response, I listed some of my personal top eight which include (not in order): Patrick Mahomes, Deshaun Watson, Andrew Luck, Baker Mayfield, Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson, Carson Wentz, and Jared Goff.

I wasn’t all that surprised to hear that some people would rank Murray ahead of Goff, though I wouldn’t. What I was surprised by was how many people said they’d take Murray over Wentz. So, here I am, just a guy standing in front of a fantasy sports audience, asking them to love Wentz.

I understand love takes time, so let’s see what we can do to accelerate that process. By now, you all know I like to look at careers to date. Well, Wentz is one of 16 quarterbacks to throw for 10,000 or more passing yards three seasons into his career:

This list is a bit of a mixed bag in terms of successful careers. You have Andrew Luck, Peyton Manning, Dan Marino, and Cam Newton. Then you also have Blake Bortles, Joe Flacco, and Jeff Garcia. Still, it’s impressive company and filled with many quarterbacks who had successful real life/fantasy football careers.

However, what I’d like to most highlight is notice the number of games that Wentz played. He accomplished this feat in 40 games. Sure, he missed those games due to multiple injuries which I’ll get to in a bit, but he still made this list despite all of that. Additionally, he ranks seventh in passing touchdowns among the players listed here and has the second-fewest interceptions behind Prescott.

It is important to talk about the injury history with Wentz, since I believe that is what is causing many people to not love him. In his last year in college, he broke his wrist and missed eight weeks. In 2017, he tore his ACL and LCL which caused him to miss three games and the playoffs. That same injury caused him to miss the first two games of 2018, and then he missed another three because of back issues.

Considering Wentz has missed 11 games if you count the playoffs since the start of 2017, it’s not all that surprising that some are considering him risky for fantasy. Add in how Nick Foles played in his absence, and there are some questions about whether Wentz is just a system quarterback. Plus, if you look at how players finished the year, Wentz finished as the QB21 this past season. Additionally, in his rookie season he finished as the QB20. Two QB2 finishes in three seasons doesn’t strike most people as someone you should be selecting as a top-eight quarterback.

However, in 2017 he finished as the QB6. I’d also like to suggest we shouldn’t be looking at QB finishes but rather how they did in points per game if they started a minimum of around seven games. So, what did that look like for Wentz? Well, in 2018, he was QB14 in PPG. In 2017? He was QB3.

This is likely where someone tells me that those points per game totals are nice, but they don’t mean much if he can’t stay healthy. I’m not even going to argue against that. However, I think we as a community may be penalizing him too much for the injuries because they happened so close together.

I also believe he has job stability. In fact, Howie Roseman, the general manager of the Eagles, stated he has complete confidence in Wentz and the team is working on signing him to a long term deal. The quarterback in Doug Pederson’s system is one you should be interested in, since we’ve seen whoever it is have great fantasy success.

This leads me to the next reason to be falling in love with Wentz again (besides the fact he looks exactly like Prince Harry). Roseman is some kind of cap wizard and has found a way to surround his franchise quarterback with a ton of talent. Zach Ertz is still there, Dallas Goedert is developing, Alshon Jeffery is a top wide receiver when healthy, the team just brought back DeSean Jackson, selected Draft Twitter darling JJ Arcega-Whiteside, and drafted Miles Sanders who many seen as a three-down back.

This year will easily see Wentz have the most weapons to work with that he’s seen in his young career with the Eagles. It’s possible that the team wants to run the ball more, but under Pederson, the team has never ranked lower than 13th in pass attempts. I’d expect that to continue.

All of this is not to say that I hate Murray. Far from it. I just have trouble ranking a quarterback who is going to be in a system that we’ve never seen at the NFL level in a system that we’ve never seen succeed at the NFL level ahead of one who has both those things going for him.

It’s also entirely possible that I’m writing this piece in reaction to just a small sample of owners who have rookie fever as seems to happen every year. However, the sentiment on Wentz has seemed to be negative for a few months now at least. It’s almost as if the community forgot that sweet sweet summer in 2017 that they spent infatuated.

Just to prove I’m not crazy, last year at this time Carson Wentz was 46th in ADP. Now he is 89th. Some drop is to be expected, but I’m not sure he should have dropped over 40 spots because of this past season.

One day, hopefully long now, Wentz will become a middle-aged quarterback who can no longer play and looks like someone who you used to love in fantasy. Today is not that day. Today is the day to experience pure bliss with Wentz as he brings you a championship.