Philadelphia Eagles: Is Carson Wentz the second coming of Brett Favre?

How similar is Brett Favre to the Philadelphia Eagles current quarterback?

Just over halfway through the 2020 season, and Carson Wentz currently leads the entire NFL in interceptions (14). That’s obviously less than ideal, and it’s led a lot of people to express doubt in the Philadelphia Eagles current quarterback situation. However, for whatever it’s worth, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen a franchise QB struggle with ball security.

Dating back to the 2016 draft process, the player that Wentz was actually compared to the most was that of Hall of Famer Brett Favre. Both were big-armed gunslingers who could hit the “home run” pass with ease, and both had the tendency to get a little over aggressive when it came to their desire to push the ball downfield.

Despite Favre’s tendency to throw interceptions, he still had a historically good career. He won three MVP awards, a Super Bowl, was named to three Pro Bowls and three All-Pro teams, and of course capped it all off with the before mentioned Hall of Fame selection. He did all of this while leading the league in interceptions on three different occasions, and never throwing fewer than 13 picks in a season while playing for Green Bay.

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There was a calculated chaos to Favre’s offense, and the Packers were content with him throwing interceptions as long as it meant he would connect on a ridiculous 50+ yard bomb on occasion (which he normally did). Green Bay bought into this gunslinger mentality, did their best to surround Favre with the appropriate weapons and offensive line pieces, and then just simply let their quarterback do his thing.

When it comes to Wentz, the Philadelphia Eagles were pleasantly surprised to find out that his ball security wasn’t as big of an issue as initially expected early in his career. He only threw 14 interceptions during his rookie season, and then threw seven in each of the three seasons following. The big play mentality was still very much there with #11, but for the most part, he was doing a good job avoiding INTs.

2020 has obviously been a different story, as he’s already tied his career high for interceptions in just eight games. There’s obviously an abundance of context behind that, as his offensive line has been the worst in the league in terms of pass protection and his “weapons” are still struggling to stay on the field.

Fans of the team have been quick to pin Wentz’ interceptions as the main reasons for the Eagles struggles this year, but they’ve failed to acknowledge how Wentz’ desire to hit the big play has saved this team on a handful of occasions as well (just like Favre used to do). His aggressiveness kept the team close against the Steelers and Ravens, it helped them knock off the 49ers, and it especially was on display against the Giants.

His throws to John Hightower and Boston Scott in the fourth quarter essentially won the Eagles the ballgame.

On pace for 28 interceptions at the moment, I highly doubt we’ll see a season this bad from Wentz again moving forward. He’s proven he can avoid interceptions in the past, and the team will hopefully improve their pass protection over the offseason. With that said, I also highly doubt we’ll ever see Wentz keep his INT total under 10 like we saw in 2017, 2018, and 2019. He’s a gunslinger, and airing the ball out deep down the field is ultimately how he wants to play.

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With that in mind, the Philadelphia Eagles only have two choices. Commit to this style of all-or-nothing offense like the Packers did with Brett Favre, or continue to try to mold Wentz into a pocket-passer, accuracy driven QB. If they do the former, they could very well experience similar success that Green Bay saw with Favre. If they do the latter, we could be in store for another couple seasons of mind-numbingly painful Eagles offense.

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