Evaluating Carson Wentz in his Commanders debut
Taking a closer look at the performance of quarterback Carson Wentz in the season opener against the Jaguars
The Washington Commanders kicked off the Carson Wentz era with a victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday. Washington experienced the full rollercoaster that is the Carson Wentz experience. Wentz completed 27 of 41 passes for 313 yards, four touchdowns and two interceptions. The offense started hot scoring touchdowns on the opening two drives before going cold. Wentz threw interceptions on back to back plays and missed a number of throws he should have made. But he also managed to bounce back and made some tremendous throws that ultimately outweighed the negatives.
That’s likely what Commanders fans are going to have to get used to with Wentz at quarterback. There will be games where those negatives outweigh the positives and it all looks horrible, so be prepared for that. But to start the season, Wentz overall played well. Let’s take a closer look at his performance.
Wentz and the offense started off hot with Scott Turner calling some creative plays and the Commanders driving down the field for back to back scoring drives to open the game. Wentz looked comfortable running the offense and his highlight throw in that period was probably to running back Antonio Gibson on a variation of the sail concept.
On this play, the Commanders have both Antonio Gibson and J.D. McKissic aligned in the backfield alongside Wentz. Gibson runs the sail route, sneaking out of the backfield to the right side, working up the seam and then breaking off the route towards the sideline. On the outside, McLaurin runs a deep post to clear the deep defender while Curtis Samuel runs a shallow cross from the far side as the underneath checkdown option. It’s a very nice variation of the sail concept and Gibson runs wide open as he breaks towards the sideline. Wentz does a nice job staying poised in the pocket as the edge rusher loops inside and delivers a dime to Gibson despite the deep safety reading the play and attempting to undercut it. The ball was placed perfectly where only Gibson could catch it and the Commanders pick up a big gain.
However, after a hot start, things suddenly cooled off for Washington and Wentz. One of Wentz issues is his inconsistency with his mechanics, which can often lead to him sailing throws over receivers. He had a number of those types of misses against the Jaguars.
Here are three examples of Wentz sailing some of his throws. The first play of the clip was actually Wentz’s first throw of the game. Jahan Dotson broke outside on an out route and Wentz was a beat or two late in delivering the throw. Once he did get the ball out, it was high. Dotson has a terrific catch radius, so was able to go up and reach the pass, but because the throw also came late, he couldn’t get his feet down in bounds while still reaching up for the high throw. The second play of the clip shows Wentz throwing high and behind Logan Thomas up the seam while the third play is of Wentz sailing an out route to Dax Milne.
These are all throws Wentz should be making. Typically sailed throws come as a result of the front shoulder flying open and you can see certainly in the two throws to his left, Wentz’s front shoulder does open more than it should which likely causes those passes to sail over the intended targets. That type of mechanical issue can be worked on and fixed but generally takes a lot of repetitions and is more of an offseason project than something done during the season. So these sailed throws will likely continue.
Wentz also had a bad spell at the end of the third quarter and start of the fourth quarter where he threw back to back interceptions. Both were bad interceptions for different reasons.
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