These video games, although, don’t exist in a vacuum. Whether Wentz performs effectively in place of Taylor Heinicke — who changed Wentz approach again when the Commanders have been a lowly 2-4 — will assist decide whether or not Washington clings to the seventh and closing spot in the NFC playoffs. But it’ll additionally assist decide who will play quarterback for this crew subsequent season. How horrifying.
What a predicament. The right plan of action for followers is to root for the Commanders, and due to this fact for Wentz, so Washington may end with a successful document for the first time in Rivera’s three seasons. But if Wentz performs two strong video games — and perhaps a 3rd, and even fourth, in the playoffs — may he be entrenching himself in the job once more subsequent yr?
There’s the downside: Any Washington fan needs a playoff look, significantly in an NFC subject that, other than Philadelphia and San Francisco, is more likely to embrace some decidedly beatable opponents. For a franchise that has only one playoff victory this century, passing on these alternatives is unwise.
But you don’t need Wentz to be the quarterback of the future — even in 2023. He is a placeholder, no higher. Shoot, the Commanders are in this place — preventing for the playoffs as 2022 turns to 2023 — as a result of Heinicke changed the injured Wentz and karmically, if not statistically, supplied a elevate. Do the Commanders go on the 5-1 run that rid them of a 2-4 begin with Wentz at the controls? We’ll by no means know. I think not.
The following drill is perhaps drained, nevertheless it stays instructive. Compare a few quarterbacks and their 2022 statistics.
QB A has a 62.9 completion proportion, 4.4 landing proportion, 2.4 interception proportion, 8.5 sack proportion, 6.5 yards per try, an 86.3 passer ranking and a 32.6 QBR. (QBR is ESPN’s quarterback ranking metric, a class led by Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes at 78.7; Minnesota’s Kirk Cousins ranks twentieth at 51.0.)
QB B has a 62.2 completion proportion, 4.6 landing proportion, 2.3 interception proportion, 6.8 sack proportion, 7.2 yards per try, an 89.6 passer ranking and a forty five.0 QBR.
Who’s who? Why does it matter? It’s clear one shouldn’t be value $22 million — Wentz’s wage this season — and the different $2.375 million, which is the common of Heinicke’s two-year deal. If you’re going to get principally the identical manufacturing out of every of the two quarterbacks, go together with the cost-effective one so you’ll be able to construct the remainder of your roster.
More than that: Wentz’s deal, ought to the Commanders not decide out of it — and so they can decide out with no wage cap ramifications — calls for him to make $20 million in 2023 and $21 million in 2024. That doesn’t seem to be cash effectively spent — and that’s no matter how he performs over the following two weeks, and doubtlessly into the playoffs.
So it is a conundrum. Root for the Commanders as a result of that’s what you have been introduced as much as do — even when they performed below different title(s). But at the value of maybe extending what looks as if a lifetime of quarterback purgatory? That’s expensive.
Washington’s offseason quarterback priorities ought to embrace, if not be topped by, re-signing Heinicke to be a backup, if not the quasi-incumbent starter ought to the Commanders take their quarterback of the (very close to) future in the first few rounds of the draft — or whether it is, by some miracle, rookie Sam Howell. Heinicke is adored in the locker room and by giant swaths of the fan base. He is able to successful a sport or perhaps a few in a row. Over an prolonged stretch, he’s invariably uncovered. But you need him in your constructing and as your backup, unquestionably.
We don’t know what Howell, whom Washington chosen in the fifth spherical this previous spring, may carry as a result of he hasn’t taken a daily season snap. But contemplate that quarterbacks main groups into the NFC playoffs have been taken in the second (Philadelphia’s Jalen Hurts), fourth (Cousins and Dallas’s Dak Prescott), sixth (Tampa Bay’s Tom Brady) and seventh (San Francisco’s Brock Purdy) rounds. It’s not unattainable to search out your quarterback additional down in the draft. Whether that’s Howell or a participant the Commanders choose subsequent spring doesn’t a lot matter. They simply have to search out him — in some way, a way, for as soon as.
The hazard is permitting the subsequent two weeks — or extra — to trick you into the concept that Wentz is the answer in 2023 and past. This crew doesn’t essentially want an all-pro at the most essential place in American sports activities to succeed. It has proficient younger playmakers on offense — Terry McLaurin and Jahan Dotson as receivers, Brian Robinson Jr. as a working again — and its defensive entrance has reestablished itself as a dependable and disruptive power. Washington doesn’t want to attain 30 factors every week to win. But these Commanders, whether or not with Wentz or Heinicke, have topped 20 factors simply 5 instances in 15 video games.
That doesn’t lower it, and there’s now sufficient proof that Wentz gained’t magically change it. Oh, the quarterbacks above? QB A — the one with the (barely) decrease landing proportion, larger interception and sack charges, decrease passer ranking and QBR? That’s Wentz. For all his attraction, Heinicke has proven he’s not a franchise quarterback. Wentz has related (or worse) stats — and he in some way is? Nope. No approach.
It is smart to show again to Wentz in opposition to Cleveland, as a result of Heinicke has adopted his magical run by going 0-2-1 and turning the ball over too ceaselessly. But tread flippantly right here. Maybe there’s a approach for the protection to elevate the crew to victories over the Browns and the Cowboys and to battle for a playoff win — and for Wentz to be extra passenger than pilot, which might make shifting on from him in the offseason a bit simpler. Could.
Such a tricky spot. If Wentz performs effectively, is he again in 2023? Is that what the Commanders and their followers ought to need? The solutions could be “yes” to the first and “no” to the second, which might preserve the Commanders proper the place they’ve been for what looks as if eternity: trying for a franchise quarterback, repeatedly and once more.