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Another quarterback trade, born out of desperation, was (unofficially) completed long before the start of the NFL league year. And while it’s not quite similar to the Matthew Stafford / Jared Goff deal, Carson Wentz’s move to Indianapolis has many of the same weird undertones and plenty of risks.
That move was as much about a bad contract and big cap as anything else (like Goff), and while it doesn’t involve two quarterbacks – or nearly as much draft pay as the Lions / Rams trade – it was born from the same origins and has more in common than the Colts or the Eagles would like. This is a recent top-two pick overall playing the most important position of all professional team sports, which had quickly become a sunk cost and cash albatross for the team that l ‘selected, who found himself in the untenable position of trying to get some sort of compensation sufficient to make up for whatever had already been invested in him.
It is hardly a position of strength.
In the case of the Rams, it wasn’t personal between the QB and the coach, just that Sean McVay had already done all his best quarterback whispering and gone as far as he thought he could go with Goff, in terms of restoring the offensive. and the game call and all the rest to his strength. He had run his course, leveled off, and the cold reality was that Goff had lost his job to previously unknown John Wolford, not because of his hand injury, but because of his performance. McVay believed Wolford’s ability to get out of pocket might unlock more of the offense than Goff could provide, and no amount of salary or salary cap would change that.
The bond between the coach and the quarterback has been severed. McVay told the property directly, sources said he needed a quarterback upgrade for 2021, and no matter how heavy it might be from a ceiling perspective, Stan Kroenke got it. the gravity of the situation and the Rams began to make exploratory appeals to Stafford and Aaron. Rodgers and anyone else McVay deemed to be in a better position to take the offense to higher ground and capitalize on what had become one of the major defenses in the league.
At the same time in Philadelphia, the Eagles player rose to clinch a spot after Goff in 2016 also fell out of favor. He didn’t lose his job in season to a young journeyman, but he lost it to a very brutal second-round pick that no one – Eagles included – expected to play more than the occasional RPO. in 2020. In Philly, it got personal (because of course) between Wentz and head coach Doug Pederson. Wentz, according to team and league sources, had also fallen out of favor with the locker room, unable to connect with a wide range of players, acting more in his personal interest than one might expect of ‘a quarterback and franchise leader. Loss and adversity had brought out the worst in him, he failed to handle the loss of his place to Jalen Hurts with aplomb and, as reported here days after losing his job, a plethora of general managers and NFL executives were already predicting Wentz’s fast. exodus from Philadelphia after the season, even as Eagles officials have argued that there is nothing to do here and that Wentz remains a key part of the organization.
A divorce was imminent, the league knew, and that was always going to limit the number of suitors and the degree of compensation for a player with a growing injury history, a propensity for turnovers and now years away from the time he was mentioned as an MVP candidate. Things really fell apart when sources said Wentz skipped exit meetings with Pederson. He went out of his way – passively-aggressively and otherwise – to make it clear that he didn’t want to be a part of everything that was going on in Philadelphia, and even after Pederson was fired a week into the season, the things between the quarterback and the organization continued to get worse.
And unlike, say, the Lions and Stafford, there was no harmony in the detachment, things were not simpatico, and there was a very limited commercial market for Wentz. Super limited. Like, basically, a team: the Colts. Head coach Frank Reich had done wonders with Wentz in Philly as an assistant coach there, they remained in love with each other and Colts general manager Chris Ballard had made it known from afar that he was looking for a veteran, a potential quarterback in the franchise. , believing the rest of the roster was built to compete for a Lombardi right now.
Of course, it took the Colts to lose on Stafford for even Wentz’s marriage to materialize, and that negotiation with Detroit went in a direction in terms of the number of first-round picks that Ballard just couldn’t / could not compete; he wasn’t offloading at least $ 50 million in salary, like the Rams did with Goff, and wouldn’t continue to throw first-round picks to the Lions to facilitate such a trade. Which brought them back to Wentz, with the Bears hanging out, but never really diving, as their only real competition.
It always set up an Eagles / Colts move – predicted here and in many other places in December when Wentz was benched – and that’s where it ended. Of course, with Stafford getting such huge returns, there was always a need to complicate this process further, with the Eagles hoping to land at least one foolproof first-round pick, but ultimately settling for a third in 2021 and a second in 2022. It would become a first round if Wentz played 75% of the Colts on offense this year, or at least 70% (injuries have been a problem) and Indianapolis makes it to the playoffs.
It’s not a perfect fit for either team, but like Rams / Lions trading, it makes perfect sense in less than ideal circumstances. The Colts needed more than another bandage a year after Andrew Luck’s shocking retirement, Wentz fits the pattern and knows the coach (like Philip Rivers a year ago) and the price is right . They’re basically renting him out now, year on year, at less than $ 25 million per season – much affordable for a quality starting QB (if in fact Wentz goes back to being a quality starting QB, which is very open to the question. debate).
The Eagles were still limited to an active contender, and could score a 1 and a 3 for a player who had no future there, had become a problem on and off the field and whose presence would reduce their ability to moving forward in harmony with a young, cheap quarterback, whether it’s Hurts or someone else. It is far from ideal to be stuck in this position for a player in which he has invested so much money, time, interim capital and other assets, but this is where it happened. from 2020 to 2021, and GM Howie Roseman got the best deal possible from my perspective in that context.
None of this means the Colts or the Eagles will really benefit in the end. If the Colts leave Wentz in a few years – quite possible given the circumstances that brought us here in the first place – it’s not a victory. Philadelphia is clearly envisioning 2021 as a reset – eating an NFL record high on Wentz as full proof of that – and the property indicated that at the press conference when Pederson was sacked. For them, it’s an addition by subtraction, and if Wentz gets injured again, they’re only looking for a late third-round pick and possibly a second-round midfielder pick for someone they thought. be there all his career.
It remains to be seen if other quarterbacks will have a fresh start elsewhere in 2021 – Russell Wilson, Aaron Rodgers, Deshaun Watson? – but if so, those trades would be entirely different from those last two quarterback moves. The market for them would be almost limitless, there are no terrible contracts to sell as part of the exchange, and the limits of desperation would not be present. But until now, very early in this offseason, desperation has been the rule.
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