Philadelphia Eagles: We should take Carson Wentz at face value

Given a chance to speak earlier this week, Carson Wentz seemed like he trusted what the Philadelphia Eagles are doing, and we should believe him.

This time a year ago, I’m not sure that I would have given Carson Wentz the benefit of the doubt. The Philadelphia Eagles quarterback had many questioning his ability, like me, and skepticism was rampant. Heck, it continued that way for a large part of the 2019 season as well. But after what Wentz went through, after what he did to drag the Eagles to a division title and an unlikely playoff berth, we all owe him one.

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We can start repaying what he’s done by trying not to read too much into his comments earlier this week when he spoke to the media. Yes, he’s probably feeling wounded on some base level that the team decided to pick Jalen Hurts in the second round. It’s called being human. But he said all the right things about the situation. Let’s leave it at that. Some say that he’s just spewing the party line like he was told to, searching for some deeper meaning than what was actually said. But I think that we just have to trust him and what he says, otherwise we’ll once again be looking at the kind of Wentz/Foles divisiveness that caused issues to begin with.

We don’t have to like everything about the way that Carson Wentz plays football, or what he says or does off the field. But the guy has been a model citizen for over four years despite some really trying times. So let’s not try to get into his psyche or make up discord where none might exist.

We can also take the recent comments made by Josh McCown to heart. The guy was around a lot of NFL locker rooms, and he doesn’t have any particular loyalty to the Eagles that would force him to shoot down any speculation about organizational issues. He’s free to give an honest assessment, and he can get as crazy as Donovan McNabb if he really wants to. But McCown was able to see first-hand the kind of player and leader that Wentz is, and he says he truly believes that Wentz will not be shaken by bringing on a young QB. Sounds good to me.

Even if Wentz does have some doubts, he’s doing the right thing and only expressing them privately, rather than creating a potential hostile situation for himself and the team. We can try to dig deeper into his public words, but that really won’t do us any good. He’s allowed to have mixed feelings about things, but we can’t (and shouldn’t) want to know everything going through his mind. He says he’s ready to play football and resume the leadership role he showed last year, and that should be all that the Eagles and their fans want to hear.

I know we’re grasping for stories and trying to stir up any conceivable controversy at this point in time. But isn’t it possible, likely even, that we’re being told the truth by Wentz, as much as we really need to know it? The comments by Wentz are basically a total non-story…that I’m currently writing about. Anyway…until he shows otherwise, Carson Wentz deserves to be heard and allowed to lead this football team without any of us getting in the way. So let’s not start making things up just because we can.