It's bad enough that the Philadelphia Eagles are one of the worst teams in the NFL through nearly a quarter of the 2020 season. It's doubly concerning that the team has -- both in record and performance -- gotten worse each year since winning the Super Bowl. Coach Doug Pederson declared after hoisting the Lombardi Trophy that Philly's historic 2017 title run would be the "new normal" for the organization, and the upside of quarterback Carson Wentz, coupled with the shrewd roster management of general manager Howie Roseman, made the Birds a safe bet to contend for more championships in short order. Now, all three of those figureheads are justifiably under fire as the Eagles (0-2-1) struggle to take flight.
After going one-and-done in the 2019 playoffs, it's unclear if Philadelphia will even be back in the postseason this time around. Things change from year to year in the NFL, but the Eagles -- the Philadelphia Eagles -- should not be couched alongside teams like the New York Jets and Jacksonville Jaguars in the Week 4 standings.
So who's truly to blame for this unmitigated mess? Who's the chief culprit for the Eagles' flailing start to 2020? Far more than three parties, that's for sure. But in the interest of examining the men most in charge, we narrowed our focus to Wentz, Pederson and Roseman. It's impossible to fully separate them from each other, because the trio has operated in unison since Pederson's hiring and Wentz's arrival back in 2016.
It is possible, however, to see who is and isn't holding up their end of the bargain, not only amid the Eagles' 0-2-1 start but in the decisions that led up to it.
If we could divvy up 100 percent of the blame for the Eagles' current predicament between Wentz, Pederson and Roseman, here's how we'd do so:
Howie Roseman (50 percent)
Let's start at the top. Roseman has long been hailed as an aggressive GM with a top-level reputation for trading and salary cap manipulation. His gambles paid off big time in 2017 when he outfitted Wentz and Pederson with all kinds of new toys (some at bargain prices) to accelerate the team's post-Chip Kelly turnaround. Nick Foles, Alshon Jeffery, Torrey Smith, Jay Ajayi, LeGarrette Blount, Chris Long, Patrick Robinson -- almost every Roseman addition that year was perfectly timed, and his low-risk, high-upside bets of prior years (Brandon Brooks, Nigel Bradham, Rodney McLeod) also exceeded expectations.
Since then, however, Roseman has swung and missed a lot more than he's made contact, let alone hit home runs. And most of his malpractice has come on the offensive side of the ball, which is especially problematic in today's NFL. The most glaring mistake: A repeated and crippling dedication to aging or oft-injured starters, coupled or fueled by an inability to consistently unearth young talent. Injuries are an unpredictable part of the game, so Roseman can't always be faulted for a pulled hamstring or torn ACL, but there's a stark difference, for example, between banking on a 30-year-old DeSean Jackson to break a five-year streak of missed games and drafting just one good wide receiver.
Miles Sanders, Zach Ertz and Dallas Goedert give the Eagles a great trio between the running back and tight end spots, but WR and the offensive line -- arguably the two most critical spots to a QB's development -- have consistently been rocked by injuries, underwhelming talent or both under Roseman's watch. Instead of finding a way to land an All-Pro pass catcher like DeAndre Hopkins, or at least hitting on one of the picks it might've taken to acquire him (that were instead wasted on non-factors like J.J. Arcega-Whiteside), Roseman has cycled through veterans already at the end of their rope (Mike Wallace), already perpetually banged up (Jackson, Jeffery, Marquise Goodwin) or already outside of the coach's plans (Golden Tate). He may have finally landed a play-maker in first-rounder Jalen Reagor this year, but go figure, Reagor's now on injured reserve, leaving the WR room barren once more.
Bleeding Green Nation's Benjamin Solak hits this nail on the head in a recent diagnosis of the Eagles' broken offense:
Wentz hates the players to whom he's throwing the football, as they reward his targets with poor routes, drops, incompletions, and interceptions. He plays like a quarterback in fear of his teammates and how their failures will reflect on him, in a locker room he has never won over, to a fan base that has forever wondered if a better option is on the bench -- an idea only encouraged by the same front office that considered his current weapons sufficient when they drafted (QB) Jalen Hurts (this year).
The idea that Carson Wentz has had subpar supporting casts for most of his career is perhaps a bit overstated. At the end of the day, franchise QBs lift themselves -- and others -- out of their circumstances. But good golly, you'd be hard-pressed to find a signal-caller who's been asked to shoulder so much in between his own injury issues. Did Roseman really believe that spending a high pick for cornerback Darius Slay (who's admittedly been very good) was more important than, say, actually insuring Wentz's blind side beyond a declining, 38-year-old Jason Peters? Or than adding more than just a few rookies to a WR corps in desperate need of proven production? Ertz and Goedert and the like overshadow the reality that Philly really has lacked firepower. And that's on the GM.
Doug Pederson (25 percent)
Pederson is next in line not because he's a bad coach. Far from it. In fact, long-term, there's a reasonable case to be made that he deserves the longest leash of this entire trio. This is a man, remember, who weathered all the injuries before the 2017 title run, adapted his offense to bring out the best in Foles, outsmarted Bill Belichick on football's biggest stage, then weathered even more injury storms in both 2018 and 2019 to make three consecutive trips to the playoffs. Somehow, some way, he's always squeezed inspiration from this team at the most critical times. And yet, right now, it seems as if he's completely lacking a plan.
Pederson has always deferred to Jim Schwartz on the defensive side of the ball, so set that aside for now; Schwartz's unit, while not always pretty, tends to balance out by year's end. The offense, however, is Pederson's baby, and somehow it lacks any semblance of an identity in year five of Wentz's career. You can blame some of that on poor or unavailable personnel (hello Howie), but you can also blame it on a coach who's far too often wavered from his once-signature boldness and creativity, while seemingly overseeing a flavor-of-the-month strategy surrounding Wentz. The 2017 Eagles were a well-oiled, big-play machine. The 2018-2019 Eagles were largely slow-moving and methodical. In 2020, Pederson apparently wants the Eagles to be everything at once.
The coach said after the Eagles' Week 3 tie to the Bengals that he would consider simplifying his offense to get Wentz and Co. into a better rhythm. That's fine and dandy, and it just might work. He's done similar things before, like when Foles took over years ago, or when Wentz went on arguably the best stretch of his career to close 2019. But why in the world did it take three horrendous games to adjust? Pederson thrives when his team is forced into a corner, but it's also up to him to ensure that the corner doesn't become inescapable. His QB needs him. His team needs him. Just because time has been on his side before doesn't mean it will be again.
Carson Wentz (25 percent)
Wentz meanwhile, is probably the most polarizing of all. A legitimate MVP candidate in 2017 and somewhere between good and great from 2018-2019, with a few big lows and big highs along the way, he's hurt the Eagles more than he's helped them this year -- so much so that it's not crazy to foresee scenarios where Pederson could be forced to send him to the bench, either as a motivational tactic or an outright look-ahead to 2021. As Solak eloquently argues, though, the Eagles don't have a Wentz problem as much as they have an "everything" problem three games into the season:
What solves these problems? Everything does. Better receivers, better game plans, better coaching, better protection, better quarterback. There is no chicken nor egg when Carson Wentz's disastrous 2020 is considered: everything is bad around him, and finally, he is bad enough to reflect it.
In other words, Wentz has gone from bearing the burdens of the Eagles' underlying and persistent issues to becoming their most blatant one. That, no matter how you spin it, is a bad place to be in as an NFL team. Does it mean Wentz is actually more like a top-15 QB than a top-five QB? It might. Does it mean the Wentz of 2017 really was the outlier -- the peak -- of his once-acrobatic skill set? It might. Does it mean Wentz and the entire offense can't rekindle a spark and reverse course on this season? Not necessarily. It's just that there is so much bad around No. 11 right now, confounded by Wentz's own mistakes, either mental or physical, that it's hard to clearly cast optimism on the current situation.
This is why Wentz isn't totally, or even primarily, to blame for the Eagles' 0-2-1 stumble out of the gate. He needs to be better. He should be better. If his inability to completely save Philly from its present woes means we should no longer equate his upside with that of other top young QBs, then so be it. But the entire operation is clunky right now; he's simply finally following suit.
The best hope you can have, if you're an Eagles fan, probably lies in the track record of the men on the field and sidelines. Beyond mortgaging more draft picks to bolster a lineup that might be another serious injury away from a total collapse, Roseman can't do much else to perfect this makeshift "contender" he's assembled. Pederson can, however, take charge and get creative to use what he's got. Wentz, too, can at least be smarter, if not more reliant on his athleticism, to improve upon his career-worst start. Neither of those adjustments might be enough to completely fix these 2020 Eagles, but it'd at least be a start.
