The plan was to bring Carson Wentz along slowly. The plan was to let him sit behind two established veterans for a season and learn. The plan was for 2016 to be a redshirt season.
To heck with the plan.
When the Eagles traded Sam Bradford for a first-rounder and a fourth on Saturday, they seriously accelerated Wentz’s ascent into becoming the Eagles’ starting and franchise quarterback.
Why did the plan change?
"Well, circumstances change and you’ve got to take things one day at a time and see what goes on with your football team,” de facto GM Howie Roseman said. “And for us, when we look at our football team and how they performed in the offseason [and] during training camp, seeing how our defense has performed in a new scheme with coach [Eagles defensive coordinator Jim] Schwartz, [and] obviously the special teams has been a strength for us, we felt like this was an opportunity for us – not only now, but going forward – that we had to take advantage of.”
Reports surfaced on Saturday that the Eagles are planning to start Wentz in the season opener against the Browns on Sept. 11 as long as he’s healthy. Roseman was asked about that possibility on Saturday and didn’t confirm or deny them.
“You know, the coaches are all out of the office; they’ll be back [tomorrow],” Roseman said. “In terms of who we’re going to be playing this week, that’s a coaches’ decision. So, we’ll kind of operate from there.”
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Even if Wentz isn't the starter at the beginning of the season, he'll clearly have a bigger role with the team in 2016. And he'll likely become the starter at some point.
What has the rookie done to instill confidence in him in a few months?
"It starts with his attention to detail; the way he goes about his business," Roseman said. "But at the same time, we rely on the people who are around him all the time. That starts with our head coach and it goes to our offensive coordinator and our quarterbacks coach. They’re in the meeting rooms; they’re with him on the field when our other quarterbacks are playing; they’re in his ear when he’s practicing; they go through the thought process with him; and they’ve been around some great ones.
"We’re fortunate to have those guys, along with our entire coaching staff, and we rely on what they’re hearing and seeing as well. But certainly our interaction with him and our discussions with him, he’s come a long way, even since we got him in April."
Wentz is still recovering from cracked ribs he suffered in the first preseason game in August. Last week, a CT scan revealed that one of his cracked ribs was only 60 percent healed, so he couldn’t play in the preseason finale.
That means Wentz has just one preseason game under his belt and could be the Eagles’ opening day starter at the Linc in a week.
“You know, it’s hard for me to talk about the medical terminology,” Roseman said when asked if Wentz will need another CT scan. “But I would just say that we meet with our doctors and trainers before we make final cuts and they were very confident about how he was feeling and his prognoses going forward.”
A common thought about the trade is that the Eagles are sacrificing this season to be better in the long run. During the spring and training camp, Bradford was clearly ahead of Wentz, so it stands to reason that Bradford would have given the team a better chance to win in 2016.
Roseman said to question the team’s potential this season would be discounting the rest of the talented players on the roster. He said he had the chance to talk to several veteran during training camp about the quarterback room – Bradford and Wentz – and added that this will be a chance for the leaders on the team to lead.
“If we didn’t have the confidence in how our team was playing and how we’re kind of structuring the team and the quarterbacks that were on the roster, we couldn’t do this,” he said. “But when you put all of that together, we felt like in balancing today and the future it was the right move for us.”
Another part of the trade on Saturday – aside from just shortening Wentz’s path to his rightful job as starter – was also recouping assets to help the young quarterback once he takes over the team.
In the trade, the Eagles got a first-round pick, a fourth-round pick, and cleared up salary cap room that can be used to sign players to help Wentz and the Eagles in the future.
“I think it goes back to when you look at the DGB trade,” Roseman said. “Why did we make the DGB trade? We said it then, we’re going to have to take risks because we don’t have the same number of picks. We don’t have the same number of resources going forward. I think from us, when we sat down and discussed this as a staff, with the coaching staff, with our front office staff, we get some of that back. Not that it makes us whole, but it goes a long way toward helping us get the ability to improve this team this offseason.
“When you have a new coaching staff and you have a lot of new players here and you’re able to look for a year and see the guys who fit in the scheme and who can fit long term and we feel like we have a lot of those guys and we signed them in the offseason. But the ability to improve our team has really expanded by this move.”
