Press Taylor: Eagles will not Rein in Carson Wentz's Aggressiveness

Press Taylor did his best Carson Wentz dance on Tuesday morning, doing an adept soft shoe through nearly 15 minutes of questions and answers during a videoconference call.

The Eagles passing game coordinator/quarterbacks coach was asked 12 questions, nine of which were about his quarterback. The other three were about rookie Jalen Hurts.

With QB coach as part of his job title, QB questions aren’t out of the norm. As passing game coordinator, though, there could have been questions about receivers, tight ends, and running backs.

Except it was Carson this, Carson that, as if there was any doubt that any second-half success the Eagles hope to have will depend on their puzzling fifth-year quarterback.

The first half clearly wasn’t good enough, with just three wins in eight games, with Wentz throwing 12 interceptions, just two below his career-high of 14 as a rookie, and losing four fumbles.

Add it up, and that’s 16 turnovers in eight games for the veteran QB.

If Taylor shed any new light on Wentz’s turnover problem, it wasn’t overly blinding.

Yes, Taylor said, Wentz knows he can’t turn the ball over.

Yes, Taylor said, the ball security has to be the priority.

No, Taylor said, it isn’t one thing causing the turnover problem or the career-low completion percentage of 58.4 percent.

Taylor is confident that Wentz will have a better second half, though the reason for such confidence was never revealed.

Wentz’s trademark aggressiveness doesn’t sound like it will be tempered, even though there is a belief that the play-calling hasn’t exactly helped Wentz shake whatever funk he appears to be in.

“Yes, we want Carson to be aggressive,” said Taylor. “We're never going to take his stinger out of him - we're not going to reign him in like that, but he has to understand, and he does, that the ball is the priority.

“We are always going to do - whatever we do, whether it's being aggressive or whether it's a direct a shot, out-of-pocket decisions like I said, we always want to make sure we are conscious of ball security first.”

Sometimes, it is difficult to tell who is calling the shots – Wentz or the coaching staff.

Wentz wants to bomb away when sometimes the most prudent course of action could be to simply take whatever the defense gives.

The coaching staff, with the 32-year old Taylor in charge of the 27-year old Wentz, at the forefront as the position coach.

There's certainly a number of issues,” said Taylor in response to why Wentz has now become less accurate than at any time in his career on throws up to 10 yards, an area where five of his interceptions have come as well.

“I wouldn't say it's one certain thing, whether it's him, somebody else, play call, whatever it is. It's hard to say there's one blanket statement of what's going on with it. But I do think that's an area that we expect a high completion percentage, a lot of people would, and obviously as you get further down the field that number changes, your expected completion percentage is going to drop a little bit as you're throwing the ball further down the field.

“But that's just something, whether it's play call, whether it's rhythm, timing, mechanics, protection, there's a lot that goes into that but again that's something that we are excited to see improvement through the second half of the season for everybody, for our offense as a whole.”

Exactly how that improvement will manifest itself, or where any confidence comes from that things will simply just change, isn’t known.

Maybe Wentz himself will have more of an answer when he talks to reporters in his usual Wednesday afternoon spot.

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