Answering the Carson Wentz Question Best will be Eagles Next Head Coach

It's clear the Eagles want their former franchise QB back this season, with it clear to a paor of Hall of Fame quarterbacks that Doug Pederson was sacrificed to help make it happen

Two Hall of Fame quarterbacks believe that Carson Wentz won a power struggle with Doug Pederson, and that’s not probably a good look for a quarterback already roiling in hot water with a portion of the Eagles’ fan base that may have wanted Pederson to return.

Brett Favre was the latest to release his line of thinking on the firing of Pederson and the Eagles’ desire to bring back a quarterback who failed to live up to his end of the $128 million bargain the team made with him in the summer of 2019.

Asked by Bruce Murray, the co-host of the SiriusXM Blitz with Brett Favre on Thursday, what his reaction was when he found out that Pederson would no longer be the head coach of the Eagles, Favre said he was “a lot of bit surprised.”

Favre and Pederson are good friends from their days together as quarterbacks in Green Bay back in the 1990s.

“Nothing should surprise either one of us in this game,” said Favre. “…To me basically it says that they chose Carson over Doug. And that’s okay. Jeffrey Lurie owns the team he can do what he wants.

“But I mean we’re not that far removed from their first Super Bowl title ever. How quickly you forget, you know? Look, the record the last few years, since the Super Bowl win, has been not up to par but you can point to a lot of things that have contributed to that. But you don’t win a Super Bowl by being a bad coach. I’m sorry, you just don’t.”

A day earlier, it was Troy Aikman who insinuated that Pederson lost his job because he was going to proceed with Jalen Hurts as his starting quarterback.

Make no mistake, the Eagles want Wentz back, otherwise they aren’t consulting with Zach Ertz in the days after the season ended and asking him how to make things right, a meeting first reported by SI.com Eagle Maven.

Then there was Lurie earlier in the week.

“I take sort of a more, probably a longer view of this was not the best season for our offense, it was a poor season, and we also had a poor season from Carson in terms of what he's been able to show in the past,” said the owner. “Very fixable and I fully expect him to realize his potential.”

Now comes the search for a head coach.

There have not been any odds out of Vegas as to how many questions into the interview before owner Jeffrey Lurie, who is the head of this search party as he has been in his four previous coaching searches over the last 25 years or so, asks what the candidate would do with Wentz.

In order to fix something, though, the problem must first be identified.

It would seem not one problem has been identified as the root of Carson Wentz’s struggles this season.

Even Lurie doesn’t seem to know exactly what one thing to begin fixing.

“There are probably multiple reasons for (Wentz’s struggles),” he said. “The way I look at it is we have an asset and we have a talent. He's a great guy and he wants nothing but to win big and win Lombardi Trophies for Philadelphia.

“This guy is tireless. He has his heart in the right place and he's really dedicated off-season, on-season – he's just what you want. It behooves us as a team with a new coach, a new coaching staff, to be able to really get him back to that elite progression.”

Perhaps the best guess as to what ailed Wentz is faulty mechanics, brought on by faulty coaching on the part of quarterback coach Press Taylor and Pederson or just Wentz’s faulty insistence that his mechanics were just fine.

Lurie, though, refuses to lay the blame at one player’s feet, in this case, Wentz. And he has a point, that there were many hands complicit in 2020’s wretched offensive showing.

Still, he stopped short of saying that Wentz will be back in 2021.

“I don't think any owner should decide that,” said Lurie. “Carson, to us, to me, and to I think virtually everybody in our organization, is a quarterback that his first four years was in many ways elite and comparable to some of the great quarterbacks' first four years in the league. Fifth-year, obviously not satisfactory, for whatever reasons.”

Whichever coaching candidate and identify those reasons – especially the No. 1 reason – will likely get the job.

Ed Kracz is the publisher of EagleMaven. Check out anything you may have missed pertaining to the Eagles by going to www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.