Thanks to Carson Wentz’s 2021 season, we can quantify the exact personal damage of a loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars. It’s the difference between a first round pick and a third-rounder.
Wentz was traded from Philadelphia to the Indianapolis Colts last offseason at a price that turned out to be first and third-round draft picks. On Wednesday, the Colts shipped him back to the NFC East to the Washington Commanders. Their price? A second-round pick swap and a package reportedly headlined by two third-round selections.
How did Wentz’s value fall so steeply after a season in which he ranked among the top 10 passers in QBR and posted a 27:7 touchdown-to-interception ratio? The biggest culprit is the late-season meltdown in which the one-time MVP candidate needed only a win over the then-2-14 Jaguars to qualify for the playoffs and instead played football like someone’s little brother was controlling him with a broken joystick.
Overthrown by Wentz – Jaguars snag an interception. pic.twitter.com/vnn9n0g0ie
— Laurie Fitzpatrick (@LaurieFitzptrck) January 9, 2022
And so, a season in which the Colts had four wins against playoff teams — including double-digit victories over the Bills, 49ers, and Patriots — ended without a trip to the postseason and sealed Wentz’s fate in Indianapolis. General manager Chris Ballard decided the risk of a reclamation project like Jimmy Garoppolo or Teddy Bridgewater was more tempting than the reward of another year of watching Wentz do this:
.@Titans PICK-6!
Tennessee takes the lead with 1:26 remaining. #Titans
📺: #TENvsIND on CBS
📱: NFL app pic.twitter.com/Afa4Bnp0Fb— NFL (@NFL) October 31, 2021
That’s … grim. So what are the Commanders getting out of this?
Most importantly, they’re getting stability at a position they’ve struggled to fill since running Kirk Cousins out of town. Washington cycled through nine different starters since Alex Smith’s career-threatening broken leg 10 games into the 2018 season. Wentz is, if nothing else, a stabilizing presence; he’s started every game of the regular season in two of the last three years. The four-game stretch he missed in 2020 was while the team auditioned Jalen Hurts for the top spot at the end of a lost season.
He’s also one of the best available options in a limited market. Tuesday’s news that Aaron Rodgers would return to the Packers and Russell Wilson’s trade to the Broncos shrank this year’s limited crop of viable starting quarterbacks even further. The free agent market’s top passers are Jameis Winston and Teddy Bridgewater. The guys likely available via trade were Wentz, Jimmy Garoppolo, and maybe someone in the Jared Goff/Derek Carr range. This year’s crop of rookies is one of the weakest of the past two decades.
Wentz was publicly available after reports dropped Indianapolis was done with him. He was also inexpensive, both as a trade target and in terms of future commitments. His $28 million cap hit in 2022 is entirely too high (and a welcome figure for the Colts to wipe off their books), but he can be released before the 2023 season with no penalty for Washington. The team can use those non-guaranteed years to potentially sign Wentz to an extension that lessens his 2022 salary cap number, or it can treat 2022 as a risk-free preview and walk away free and clear if its latest attempt to find a franchise QB fails.
The Commanders understand they only need borderline competence at quarterback to be a playoff team. They won an objectively terrible NFC East in 2020 with Dwayne Haskins, Kyle Allen, and late-stage, low-impact Smith providing AAF-level QB play. They saw the Eagles take advantage of a soft schedule to earn a 2021 Wild Card bid despite the league’s 20th-ranked passer rating and a defense that ranked 26th in overall DVOA. Tom Brady and Russell Wilson are no longer in the conference. There’s room for a mediocre team to make noise in the postseason.
Washington believes its defense more than it believes Wentz will pilot the team to shootout wins. The Commanders backslid last season, but will welcome a healthy Chase Young back to the lineup and should get a better season from cornerback William Jackson after a regrettable 2021.
The secondary is a problem and Wentz’s presence will eat up most of the team’s existing cap space, but help could be coming at this year’s draft. The team still has its first two picks and has traditionally focused on defense (five first round defenders in the last five years). Acquiring a veteran QB was a message Washington isn’t interested in the risk of another Haskins-level prospect with the 11th overall pick. Instead, the team is willing to invest its developmental tools at building around the position.
For this trade to be a success, Wentz just has to be average and available. He needs to be the risk-averse quarterback he failed to be in Indianapolis. He has to be what the team hoped it was getting when it sent a third round pick and Kendall Fuller to the Chiefs to acquire Alex Smith.
That’s not really in Wentz’s DNA at this point, but he’s still capable of big throws and steady plays. The question now is whether Ron Rivera can do what Sean Payton did with Jameis Winston in New Orleans and get him to stop playing hero ball and embrace smart, safe decisions instead.
That’s a major lift for a quarterback who’ll turn 30 years old this season. But it’s probably the best Washington was going to get in 2022. If Wentz fails, he sets the Commanders up to take a crack at another quarterback in a much stronger draft next spring. If he succeeds, he’s under contract for two more years.
That’s not a great risk to take, but at least it was a relatively cheap one.
