Commanders Carson Wentz, the pressure, and NFC East quarterbacks
Which NFC East quarterback is under the most pressure?
NFL Network’s “Good Morning Football” discussed the question for a segment Monday morning. Of course, to no one’s surprise, the four panelists all chose a different quarterback (Dak Prescott, Carson Wentz, Jalen Hurts, Daniel Jones) and then supplied their reasoning.
Tom Pelissero, in his reasoning, offered this opinion regarding Washington’s Carson Wentz.
“If we are talking pressure, I have a hard time saying it is anybody other than Carson Wentz. When you are in your third stop in three years, and we know the way things ended in Philadelphia, we know the way things ended in Indianapolis. Then, before you have even played a game, you do an interview where somebody is trying to get under your skin, asking really poorly worded questions. The team president has to get on Twitter and fight over the reporter and threaten access if you are covering/asking questions like that, and he gets in a spat?”
“First of all, this only happens in Washington. Secondly, it only happens surrounding Carson Wentz. There is just this drama that follows him. Carson Wentz, last year, everybody loses sight of the fact that he played pretty well. Set aside those last two games–which, of course, you can’t. Terrible against the Raiders after missing the week with COVID. Terrible the next week against the Jaguars; the whole team played badly against Jacksonville.”
“But those previous 15 games? He was pretty good. He had one or two plays in the game where he was throwing a left-handed interception out of his end zone for no particular reason. But you look at the stats; you look at the tape. He made a lot of plays. This is a good quarterback.”
But you’ve got to be able to calm everything else down around him, and you know the other part of this. The reality of the NFL is that the moment the quarterback who is under pressure and has that drama surrounding them has a bad game or has a bad play, it swells up from underneath.”
“You start to hear about, ‘Why don’t they play Sam Howell?’ Why don’t they play Heinicke?’ They are going to have to deal with that if he does not come out firing. I know that Scott Turner is going to get the absolute maximum out of Carson Wentz. Is that good enough? Can he avoid all of those pitfalls to live up to that pressure this year? That is my question.”
