Former Philadelphia Eagles star spot on with assessment of Carson Wentz

If you really want to know who someone is, ask the people who are around them all of the time. There’s some advice that will serve you well if you’re a Philadelphia Eagles fan. That’s also some advice that will serve you well in life.

If you want to know what type of husband a man is, ask his wife. If you want to know what you’re getting from, say, a quarterback in the NFL, ask his teammates. Then again, you could also ask his teammates or simply watch how hard his teammates play for him. Do you see where this is headed?

Seriously, why do the Philadelphia Eagles keep coddling Carson Wentz?

At this point, whether you love Carson Wentz, you’re tired of him, or you’re neutral but you believe that both he and the Philadelphia Eagles need a reset, it’s hard to imagine how things could ever go back to the way that they were.

Then, there’s that other thing, it’s hard to ignore the fact that we’ve seen his teammates play harder for Nick Foles and then, play harder for Jalen Hurts two years later. This Eagles organization has said goodbye to a Super Bowl-winning quarterback because they wanted this to be Wentz’s team.

Let’s be frank though. Choosing Wentz over Foles was probably the right decision, but was it the right decision to choose 11 over a Super Bowl-winning coach, Doug Pederson as well?

One former Bird, Malcolm Jenkins, expressed a few thoughts on his former team, among other things, when he joined Rich Eisen’s show recently for a chat. Here’s some of what he had to say:

"As a teammate and friend of Carson, I think that it always starts with performance, and he hasn’t performed up to the expectations that everybody’s had for him…  I don’t think he would say he’s played up to his own expectations, but some of the other issues I felt when I was in the locker room was that there was just too much leeway, and it didn’t make him a better player."

If you’ll remember, part of the reason that Jenkins isn’t here now is that, as long as 27 was in the locker room, he was always going to be this team’s true leader, and the Philadelphia Eagles’ brass wanted 11’s voice to loom largest in the locker room.

If you haven’t noticed, part of the reason that 11 has played better with scout team guys and castoffs is that he’s intimidated by guys with large personalities. Here’s more from Jenkins.

"I don’t think they did him any favors by trying to protect his ego or trying to really protect him as a player as opposed to,  just like every other player,  keeping it performance-based and really being real about what he needed to improve on. But, also adjusting to putting him in places that can make him successful. That’s a little on the coaching staff and some on the player."

Now, you can take that with a grain of salt or run with it. It’s totally up to you. Either way, here’s a fair question. At what point does this organization stop catering to Carson Wentz and it begins to think about the other men on this roster?

Again, they let go of a quarterback who won playoff games and a Super Bowl. Why? They didn’t want 11 to feel as though he had to look over his shoulder. Then, when we learned that he hated to be coached hard, they gave him his buddy, Press Taylor, as his quarterback coach. Doug Pederson is gone. We won’t even get into the theories about Duce Staley’s alleged irritation with the way Wentz was coddled (but we could). Oh, and Duce is gone now too.

Is this the Philadelphia Eagles or Carson Wentz and the Eagles? Philly better figure it out in a hurry because the way this team shows favoritism to some guys (Jason Peters) over others (Zach Ertz) is embarrassing, and it’s causing, whether they want to say it or not, an obvious divide in the locker room. It has been for a while.