Philadelphia Eagles

How Carson Wentz's brutal rookie mistake ended Philadelphia's undefeated start

Published Nov. 15, 2016 2:00 p.m. ET

Chris Chase

Carson Wentz was due for both an interception and a major screw-up. He got both in the same play and it cost the Philadelphia Eagles a victory, a chance to stay undefeated and, perhaps, control of the NFC East. And it was all because of rookie hubris -- which may or may not be a bad thing.

The quarterback, who has spent all season thriving in a short passing attack, suddenly changed gears late in Sunday's game and threw the worst pass of his young NFL career, dropping the Eagles to 3-1 and, all of the sudden, a second-place standing (now that Dallas is 4-1) in the NFC East with the 3-2 Redskins up next.

Philly got the ball on its own 25-yard line with 1:28 left, trailing the Detroit Lions 24-23. Playing with one timeout and an offense more than able to get yardage underneath on Detroit's pass defense, Wentz had plenty of time to move 40 yards and get the Eagles in position for a game-winning field goal. But instead of trying to win with a bunch of singles, Wentz swung for the fences on the first play and ended up losing the game by throwing the first interception of his career. (He'd already set a record for most attempts by a rookie without a pick, a record broken by Dallas' Dak Prescott later in the day.)

On that first down, Wentz lined up in the shotgun, deftly avoided the four-man rush by stepping up in the pocket, shook off his first read then launched the ball 50 yards down the field looking for receiver Nelson Agholor but throwing it five feet behind him, right into the hands of Detroit's Darius Slay.

The throw was a bad decision compounded by a bad throw for a team that looked very different coming off a bye than it did in the 34-3 beatdown of the Steelers that preceded it. Was this an unfortunate, game-losing play, the kind that NFL teams make every weekend, or was it a sign of things to come, with an overrated team getting its first, and certainly not last, dose of reality?

Oh, it's probably a little bit of everything. The Eagles weren't a 3-0 team and probably aren't a 3-1 team either. Wentz, at this moment, is a fine NFL quarterback but not the guy you want unnecessarily throwing half of a football field to get a win. On the other hand, Philly getting its egos checked might be the moral sort of victory coming off a bye week in which everyone declared the Eagles the NFL's next big thing

Wentz shook off his first receiver, and he wanted to go deep all along. He never saw a wide-open Jordan Matthews streaking across the middle on a cleared out left side of the field. He had 20 yards, easy, before he had to get out of bounds. Wentz owned up to it.

"It was something we had seen from them, at the end of the first half," Wentz told reporters after the game. "We thought we had a chance there."

A chance, sure. Likely? No. What's made the Eagles 3-0 with a golden opportunity to get to 4-0? Cutting it down simply, they've had a good defense and a decent rushing attack and have put Wentz in position to succeed by developing a short-strike offense that let him play dink-and-dunk, first-read football. That last part isn't pejorative -- Wentz has been great in an offense that's best designed to assist a rookie quarterback thrive on what might be a good team or a mediocre one.

On one hand, you can admire the moxie. It's understandable why Wentz wanted to stop riding the brakes and gun it near the end of the game. You want your quarterback to think he can make that throw in that situation. You need a quarterback who wants to make that throw in that situation. But given how Wentz played in the first 238 minutes of the season and how successful the Eagles were in them, the throw was misguided at best.

Wentz threw 32 other passes Sunday. Only six were deep balls that went more than 10 yards in the air (as measured by the official NFL play-by-play feed). He completed four of those, none for longer than 27 yards, and one of those came on a third-and-36 with Detroit giving up the yards. The rest were short passes -- a majority of Wentz's completions were 11 yards or shorter -- some of which ended up in bigger gains thanks to yards after contact. The game plan had worked effectively. Detroit was mostly powerless to stop it.

So Wentz went deep instead and the Philadelphia Eagles season looks awfully different than it did before Sunday.