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Eagles

Chris Ballard Thinks Most of the Carson Wentz Criticism is “Pretty Fair”

Kyle Pagan

By Kyle Pagan

Published:

screengrab via Larra Overton

A lot of Eagles beats are in Indy for the NFL Scouting Combine and made it a priority to attend Chris Ballard’s press conference to listen to juicy answers about Carson Wentz:

Here’s a video of Chris Ballard’s answer. In it, he says he met with Carson for an hour and explains how the criticism is fair:

For the first time in six years, Carson Wentz can finally feel what it’s like to be criticized by his own team. It would’ve been interesting to see what happened with Wentz’s Philly career if Howie Roseman allowed anything negative to be said about his golden boy. Because if you did it in the Eagles organization, that was a “death sentence,” via Jeff McLane at the Philly Inquirer:

Few in the organization ever voiced concern about Wentz, for instance, even during intermittent struggles, for fear of being shunned by Roseman.

“At almost no point in personnel meetings the last couple years did anyone say anything negative about Carson,” said a team source who was part of personnel discussions . “Even when he would actually look [bad] in practice, almost nobody was willing to say anything because they knew it would be their death sentence.”

The apolitical Schwartz, in a rare moment, sounded the alarm during a get-together Lurie hosted at his Main Line estate in June 2019 when he criticized the quarterback after a lackluster spring, said two sources who were there. But it was too late anyway: Wentz’s extension was announced later that week. (Schwartz declined an interview request.)

The only documented criticism I can remember Howie lobbing at Wentz was eight months after he was gone while on WIP. There he said:

“We loved Carson (but) we played four playoff games, and we needed our backup in all of them.”

When does Howie cut off that finger by the way?

Anyway, I’m going to interpret the last part of Chris Ballard’s statement “And I think he will.” as “I think he will…with another team.” Whether Ballard wants Wentz back or not it you gotta think Jim Irsay’s (alleged) drunk tweeting at 1:20 a.m. was the nail in the coffin:

Got to hand it to Carson Wentz though. Smart move to put a picture on your Instagram letting Chris Ballard know you’re flying all the way to California to meet up with your receivers. That’s the way to sell a ‘familiarity with your receivers over someone new’ narrative. Even though now that I look at it more this kind of looks like he just got the news he’s being cut and Sam Ehlinger is off camera waiting to get back to the drill:

Kyle Pagan
Kyle Pagan

Kyle writes blog posts and does Man on the Street-style videos all around Philadelphia. He graduated from Temple University (a basketball school) in 2015. contact: k.pagan@sportradar.com

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