Revisiting How, When it all Went Wrong with Carson Wentz and Front Office

The QB and owner Jeffrey Lurie are just as culpable in how things quickly went south in the relationship between the front office and former franchise QB as the GM is

The head coach? Gone.

The franchise quarterback? Gone.

The general manager? Still here.

The fan base? Angry beyond words, though they keep trying to find them on social media sites like Twitter and Instagram.

Go ahead and blame Howie Roseman for the mess that the Eagles’ organization has become, but don’t forget to spread that blame around. Put some at the feet of that former franchise QB, Carson Wentz, and owner Jeffrey Lurie, too.

There’s plenty to go around.

Maybe leave Doug Pederson out of it, though. The former head coach may not have been much of the problem after all.

How did it all go so terribly wrong?

Lurie, as we are learning, is pulling more and more strings behind the scenes.

Wentz, as we learned, was unable to bear up to the pressure of playing in a city like Philadelphia, where the fan base is as passionate as they come,.

There’s more to it, obviously.

Somewhere along the way, the trust between Wentz and the front office – Lurie and Roseman – was broken.

It looks like that trust was fractured when Jalen Hurts was the surprise pick in the second round last April, and when the trust goes in any relationship, it is difficult to rekindle.

Let’s revisit that moment.

Roseman said just hours after drafting Hurts with the 53rd overall pick that he had talked to Wentz about the decision.

“I told him our thought process about the quarterback position and how that's always been part of our DNA in our organization, to draft and develop quarterbacks and to make that room as strong as any room in the National Football League,” said Roseman on April 25.

“Listen, I know Carson wants whatever he can to help this team this year, and he is a Pro Bowl player, and he's not going anywhere. … But we told him about it, and again, there's no threat to Carson here. Carson is a great player and great person, and I know that both these guys are great teammates.”

That was miscalculation number one by Roseman and the organization.

I was skeptical that Hurts’ presence would have any bearing in Wentz’s psyche, but I was wrong. Wentz looked like a QB pressing to ward off the threat of Hurts taking his job and he ultimately did.

Roseman was way wrong, too.

“Nobody is going to be looking at a rookie quarterback as somebody who's going to be taking over a Pro Bowl quarterback, a guy who's been on the cusp of winning an MVP,” said the GM in April. 

“At the end of the day, I'm going to go back to who we are and what we believe in. We believe in the quarterback position. We believe this guy, when we saw our board and we looked over the guys that we thought we could pick at this point, the board had kind of gone in a different direction, and we just felt like we are stewards of the organization. Our job is to make sure that the organization is strong at the positions we believe in.”

Miscalculation number two for the Eagles was extending Wentz’s contract, handing him a $128 million extension in the early summer of 2019.

At the time, it looked like a good deal for both sides.

Now, it’s a wonder how the Eagles could have badly misjudged what would happen by shelling out millions and failing not to see that their quarterback, the one they went to wine and dine in North Dakota before drafting him second overall in 2016, did not have the mental strength to bear the weight of a bringing in another QB.

The optics are embarrassing from a financial standpoint, with the Eagles taking on an NFL-record $33.82 million in dead money.

That is far and away the most ever eaten by a team, and that distinction now belongs to the Eagles’ franchise, an ignominious record that won’t be broken for a very long time, and there is plenty of blame to go around for that.

Ed Kracz is the publisher of SI.com’s EagleMaven. Check out the latest Eagles news at www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.