Wentz, Eagles Unravel in Washington

For nearly 30 minutes of football on Sunday Carson Wentz looked like an MVP quarterback

For nearly 30 minutes of football on Sunday Carson Wentz looked like an MVP quarterback.

An interception late in the first half against the Washington Football Team opened the floodgates, however, and a 17-0 potential laugher turned into a 27-17 collapse, the largest in team history against Washington and tied for the fifth-largest lead lost in franchise history.

The easy path is to lay the setback on an offensive line that was without Lane Johnson, Brandon Brooks, and Andre Dillard, and enduring the startup costs of starting Nate Herbig and rookie Jack Driscoll for the first time.

But the Eagles also built that 17-0 advantage with Wentz looking like the 2017 version of himself on a 55-yard strike to Jalen Reagor, an 8-yard touchdown toss to favorite target Zach Ertz, and the prettiest throw of the day, a 34-yard scoring hookup to Dallas Goedert where Wentz showed off elite ball placement, coupled by a nice adjustment by Goedert to haul in an over-the-shoulder catch.

“The way we started this game is exactly how we thought we could attack this team,” coach Doug Pederson said. “... (Wentz) came out and played extremely well.”

It all went south, however, and Wentz finished the afternoon with three turnovers, two interceptions, and a back-breaking strip-sack, an all-too-common occurrence for a signal-caller that straddles a fine line when it comes to extending plays.

“Kind of a tale of two halves,” said Wentz. “I have to be better. I know we came out offensively feeling good. … I have to clean up the interceptions.”

Maybe it was the eight sacks Wentz endured behind the makeshift line that fueled the mistakes or maybe it was the shaky route-running of rookie receivers Reagor and John Hightower.

“I’d say it’s a little of both,” Pederson said when asked whether to blame the undermanned O-Line, which also lost Driscoll in-game, or the QB when it came to the sacks.

Wherever you place the blame the result was the offense continuously handed a WFT with very limited offensive weapons short fields. Of the three Washington TD drives on the afternoon, none were longer than 48 yards.

Washington averaged 2.2 yards-per-rush and its QB, Dwayne Haskins, manged only 5.7 yards-per-attempt, somehow scoring 27 points with only 239 yards.

“I put our defense in a bad spot on a couple of occasions,” said Wentz. “And we definitely lost some momentum.

“... It starts with me. I have to protect the ball.”

At 17-0, all the Eagles had to do was play a clean game and Wentz couldn’t ease his foot off the gas.

The term game-manager is often used as a backhanded insult to less-talented quarterbacks. On Sunday, by the second half, that’s all the Eagles needed and Wentz couldn’t provide it.

“It’s not my job to overdo, overthink or overstress about (lineup changes),” Wentz said. “... Sometimes the defense, they get paid too, and they cover things up so sometimes you’ve got to improvise and make big things happen.

“We didn’t execute that or get that done (Sunday).”