Carson Wentz struggles in Commanders loss to Cowboys
Evaluating QB Carson Wentz and his performance against the Cowboys
Carson Wentz struggled once again for the Washington Commanders as the team fell to a 1-3 record after losing to the Cowboys on Sunday. Wentz completed 25 of 42 passes for just 170 yards, a touchdown and two interceptions. We knew going into the game that the Cowboys were going to bring pressure, especially after the Eagles got to Wentz nine times the week before. The Commanders’ offensive line had some issues with pass protection, but Wentz didn’t help them either.
Throughout the game, Wentz had a tendency to drift backwards in the pocket. Clearly he was feeling pressure from the interior, but when a quarterback drifts backwards, it makes it very hard for the offensive tackles to maintain their blocks. They are trained to block a spot in the pocket behind them and often have to resort to running an edge rusher by a quarterback if they get to the edge. The offensive lineman can’t see that their quarterback is drifting backwards during the play, so they have no way of knowing where he drifts to and what spot they need to be protecting. This means that Wentz found himself drifting into pressure rather than avoiding it, which had a significant impact on his throws.
Here in the red zone, the Commanders have a variation of a concept I know as “Dusty”, which has a corner route from the inside receiver while the two receivers to the outside work underneath and break inside, holding coverage low and inside to create space for the corner route. We can see here that Curtis Samuel comes open on the corner route with the outside corner stepping up to the receiver underneath. However, off the snap, Wentz gets spooked by the initial push inside and begins to drift backwards and to his right. By drifting backwards, he creates an easy angle for the edge rusher to get to him, while the blocker believes he’s doing the right thing in running the edge rusher around the back of the quarterback.
In effect, Wentz drifts backwards into pressure, causing him to hurry his throw and just loft it out there. Samuel does his best to run it down and make the catch, but he’s unable to get his feet down in the end zone before falling out of bounds, meaning the catch doesn’t count. Now, had Wentz not drifted back into pressure, he would have been able to set his feet and deliver a more accurate throw which could well have resulted in a touchdown.
It was a problem for Wentz throughout the game. It didn’t just cause him to miss a potential touchdown throw, it also nearly caused him to throw another interception.
This time, the Commanders run a dagger concept with the slot receiver running a deep over and the outside receiver running a deep dig behind it. Off the snap, right guard Saahdiq Charles struggles to handle Dante Fowler, who bursts up the field. However, Charles does manage to take an inside position, giving himself the opportunity to run Fowler past Wentz, just like a tackle would do on the edge. However, Wentz immediately starts to drift backwards and away to his left, when there was perhaps an opportunity to step up in the pocket and allow Charles to run Fowler past him.
This again causes issues with the throw. Wentz hurries a throw into a window that wasn’t really open, and because he was drifting backwards, his footwork is poor which causes him to lack velocity on the throw. The ball ends up landing just short of its intended target, which is lucky because Trevon Diggs was in a good position to undercut the pass and intercept it.
It’s a tough situation for Wentz because the Commanders have had so many moving parts along the interior offensive line to start the season. Obviously Chase Roullier was lost earlier this season, causing Wes Schweitzer to slide inside from guard to center, with Trai Turner replacing Schweitzer at right guard. Then Schweitzer got hurt and newly signed Nick Martin replaced him this week. Trai Turner is still struggling with an injury and hasn’t played up to par, so Saahdiq Charles replaced him at right guard early in this game too. So there’s been a lot of changing parts up front which is clearly impacting Wentz’s confidence in his protection. But by drifting backwards so much, all he does is make things harder for his tackles on the edge.
Another thing he’s not doing to help himself is just accept a bad play. This was a tendency for him in both Philadelphia and particularly last year in Indianapolis. When he felt pressure with the Colts last year, he often scrambled and then tried to do too much instead of just taking a checkdown or throwing the ball away to fight for another day. He appears to be reverting back to that tendency over the last few weeks, which has resulted in some unnecessary negative plays.
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