Swoop
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- Mar 19, 2019
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The Carson Wentz trade capped a year of extreme dysfunction for the Eagles. Appearing Friday on 97.5 The Fanatic in Philadelphia, Adam Schefter of ESPN provided a glimpse into how dysfunctional it was.
Schefter said that coach Doug Pederson and quarterback Carson Wentz didn’t talk “for weeks on end.” Schefter estimated that they didn’t communicated for “eight, nine, ten weeks.”
That’s an amazing fact, if true. How can a team function at the most important position on the field if the quarterback isn’t speaking to the coach?
Wentz started through Week 13 before being benched for Jalen Hurts; thus, if Wentz and Pederson weren’t speaking for eight weeks or longer, some of that period of radio silence would have happened during Wentz’s time as the starter. Surely, however, it doesn’t mean that there was no communication of any kind between coach and quarterback. The photo attached to this item, for example, comes from the November 30 game between the Eagles and the Seahawks. While it’s possible they decided to stand silently next to each other, chances are that they were talking at the time the photo was taken.
Regardless of where, when, and how they weren’t talking, both parties deserve blame for the outcome. Adults who are behaving like adults don’t behave that way. Regardless of who started it, someone needed to finish it — short of Pederson being fired and Wentz being traded.
The problem apparently started when the Eagles drafted Jalen Hurts. Wentz apparently never got over that. Still, something more had to happen for Pederson to become the focal point of the acrimony.
The Colts surely believe they won’t end up in the same place with Wentz. As long as things go well, that may be the case. If things go poorly (or if the Colts draft a quarterback in a round higher than, say, four), Wentz could decide to slip into silent-treatment mode, again.