If you wanted an idea of just how thin and desperate the quarterback market is, look no further than what the Commanders did on Wednesday, trading a handful of mid-round picks to the Colts for the right to be the third coaching staff to try to get Carson Wentz back on track.
Sometimes, after weeks in the desert without food and drink, we start to imagine ice cold Yeti coolers full of spring water and buffet trays full of chicken and french fries. The Commanders might not be there yet, but they, like the Colts, are choosing to see Wentz as the MVP candidate in a high-percentage RPO offense and not the prospect who was mismanaged, underdeveloped and forced into brain-scrambling hero ball for the better part of two seasons. Not the quarterback who heavily contributed to an epic spiral and loss to the Jaguars that saw a promising Indianapolis team with the best running game in football bounced out of the playoffs.
More than that, Washington probably saw its own dark corner of all this illuminated. There are a handful of teams that need to wade through this desperation, that need to trade serious capital for Jimmy Garoppolo or extract the remaining juice from Matt Ryan at more than $30 million a season. And then there is Washington, a team that would love to find itself a quarterback, but so grossly mismanaged its last two playoff-caliber quarterbacks that any passer with a no-trade clause or an amenable relationship with his respective general manager is going to ask for a restraining order from the rebranded, embattled Football Team.
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The Commanders won praise by openly admitting that they called every NFL team and asking about the status of its quarterback. Indeed, this is pragmatism. It’s putting in the work, unafraid of what others might think. But it’s also indicative of what the league’s player base thinks of the franchise. Washington could have named the stadium after Russell Wilson. One would imagine the team could have re-re-re-branded as the Mr. Unlimiteds and agreed to exclusively play Ciara on a loop in the concourse … and Wilson still would have taken a discount to play for the Broncos.
Which brings us to Wednesday, when the Commanders shipped to Indianapolis a third-round pick, an additional third-round pick that can (and likely will) become a second-rounder with playing-time incentives, and a second-round pick swap for a player whose own general manager, Chris Ballard, couldn’t muster up enough of a lie at the combine to pretend he was thinking about keeping him around.
Washington is going to allocate nearly $30 million in cap space for Wentz, who was only incrementally better statistically than Taylor Heinicke. In terms of expected points added, completion percentage and play success rate, they are nearly identical. Sadly, the Commanders needed to appear they were doing something just as badly as they actually needed to do something.
In the process, Washington has to believe it will be able to get more out of Wentz than Frank Reich, the coach who oversaw his most productive seasons in the NFL (as Eagles OC), and arguably one of the five best play-callers in the league.
Long-term mismanagement then becomes the gasoline propelling a cycle of desperation, one that happens to be particularly grim in this quarterback market.
This is not meant to be a takedown of the player, by the way. Wentz was built up and torn down by his first franchise and abandoned by the second. He was brought into the storm of NFL chaos from the insulated world of FCS football at North Dakota State and taught a graduate level course in screw you, what have you done for me lately? There is almost certainly a good quarterback left in there somewhere. He’s just not in a place for anyone to find it. Seeing him regain his footing should be something we all root for.
And here we have the worst part of the exact desperation this market creates. Wentz isn’t going to Washington to be saved. He’s not going to a place with wide-open arms hoping to revive a career. He’s going to Washington because he doesn’t have a choice like Wilson, Garoppolo or Ryan does. He can’t make the desperation work for him. He’s going there because Washington needed a quarterback after squandering Robert Griffin III and taking Kirk Cousins for granted. He’s going there because, after the Commanders called all 31 teams wondering what might jar loose, the Colts were one of the few teams cold enough to say, “Here, take it.”
Here’s hoping Wentz is smart enough to see the forest for the trees and finds a way to protect himself. Here’s hoping Commanders fans are smart enough to understand why they weren’t in the mix for anyone else. Here’s hoping the desert mirage clears up for everyone, and that somewhere in this desperate scramble for a quarterback, someone ends up finding themselves a quarterback they can fix, revive or just plain hold onto.
