NEW ORLEANS — Carson Wentz had a smile on his face, but his eyes told the real story. His pupils darted back and forth as he was peppered with questions from reporters he once knew, asking about days gone by when he was in his 20s with the NFL world at his fingertips, only for it to slip away. If his mind races with negativity regarding the way things ended for him in Philadelphia, good luck trying to get him to say it.
This looks different than the last time Wentz was here at the Super Bowl but, to those who know the full story, it feels very much the same. When the Eagles and Wentz arrived at Super Bowl LII seven years ago, he was walking with a cane, a necessity as he rehabbed the torn ACL in his left knee. It was a devastating injury at the most inopportune moment — the stretch run of an MVP-caliber season. It ultimately changed the course of his career and his life. He knew he wouldn’t play in that Super Bowl. He could only watch as Nick Foles took the baton and brought the Eagles to the glory he was supposed to capture.
This time around Wentz is healthy, and if all goes well for him and the Kansas City Chiefs, he won’t play. When the Chiefs beat the Bills in the AFC Championship, clinching their place opposite the Eagles in Super Bowl LIX, Wentz knew what was waiting for him in New Orleans: A week of questions about his old life, one that he’s worked hard to put in the rearview, not to mention his old reputation.
For years, Wentz has been mocked and ridiculed, criticized publicly and privately, often anonymously, for being a bad teammate. Wentz has never barked back — and he won’t now — though many who played with him during his time in Philadelphia want to set the record straight.
The Eagles are a different team now. Wentz is a different person, a husband and a father. And a backup.
“I go into every week envisioning every single play, trying to envision positive things happening, now it’s a much bigger stage,” Wentz said earlier this week. “I’m always trying to stay ready, trying to stay locked in. It is a weird experience being a backup. Going from being a starter to a backup, you’re one play away and you never really know (what’s going to happen).
“But trust me: my mind can wander as much as yours.”
Wentz met Stephen Glasser, a pastor and friend at North Dakota State, at the start of his faith journey, when he was still figuring out the kind of person he wanted to be. Even as he ascended to superstardom and folk-hero status in Fargo, Wentz wasn’t seeking the spotlight. He was quiet and reserved, but confident and competitive.
Glasser and Wentz would get into intense games of billiards; Wentz refused to stop playing until he won, even if it meant showing up late for class. It was back then that Wentz started to envision his future, making it to the NFL, standing on a stage and hoisting the Lombardi Trophy, on top of the world.
“He thought he could go first overall when I thought he was a fifth-round draft pick,” Glasser said. “I was like: Oh, that’s cool, man.” One day in 2015, they were playing pool, again, with ESPN on the TV. Draft analyst Mel Kiper Jr. projected Wentz for the end of the first round in 2016. “No,” Wentz said. “I’m going higher than that.”
In March 2016, Wentz got dinner with a contingent of Eagles coaches and executives that included then-head coach Doug Pederson and still-general manager Howie Roseman. It was a critical moment in that draft process, after which the Eagles knew that they had to get Wentz. So Roseman, in a series of moves, traded up from the 13th pick in the first round to No. 2. The day after that dinner, Wentz got lunch with Glasser on campus. Wentz told him: “I’m going to be an Eagle.”
On the night of the draft’s first round, a Thursday, Glasser was about to walk out and stand in front of a crowd on campus, preaching to his ministry, but first he watched ESPN on his phone as the Eagles officially drafted Wentz right behind Jared Goff out of Cal.
“It was surreal,” Glasser said. “Nobody from Fargo gets into that spotlight. We had never watched one of our own on a Sunday.”
When Wentz arrived in Philadelphia, full of hype and hope, he wasn’t supposed to be the starter, not right away. They had Sam Bradford and Chase Daniel, and didn’t need to play a rookie. They changed their minds after Wentz outplayed his veteran competition in practice.
Spencer Phillips, an offensive assistant on that Eagles staff, remembers a preseason game that year against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. In the fourth quarter, a defender nailed Wentz in the ribs as he threw to a running back. He completed the pass, but fractured his ribs on the play. “He knew he had to take this hit to make this throw,” Phillips said. “Then he walked off the field and everybody was like, Yea, he’s ready for this. You knew right away.”
Wentz was out hunting geese when Pederson called to let him know he’d be starting in Week 1 against the Cleveland Browns.
“I just feel like he was one of the more confident guys I’d probably seen at any position coming in as a rookie,” said former Eagles receiver Jordan Matthews. “It just felt like he knew who he was — and what he could do.”
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Before the 2017 season, Wentz was sitting in the quarterbacks meeting room at the Eagles facility, distracted by the blankness on the room’s white walls. It bored him. Most days, Wentz and Phillips would be the first to arrive at work, before 6 a.m. That morning, staring at the white walls, Wentz turned to Phillips and said: Wouldn’t it be awesome if we felt like we were somewhere cool and not just in this white box?
So the next day, Phillips showed up with wallpaper that looked like an ocean. Together, they put it on the walls, added new lights, new chairs and a bookshelf where Wentz could stack all of his notebooks. It gave the room feng shui, Phillips said, and turned it into an oasis for Wentz.
It was in this room where Wentz felt most comfortable, built not only from his environment but from the company. He developed a bond with offensive coordinator Frank Reich, the yin to quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo’s yang. DeFilippo was the technician, precise in his teaching, harsh in his coaching. Reich was the father figure, showering Wentz with love, praying with him, putting his arm around his pupil at the end of a successful day. “It was the perfect mix,” Phillips said.
That year, everyone in the building sensed what was coming; Wentz was on the verge of something special. Wide receiver Torrey Smith knew it the moment his quarterback ducked under defenders, broke tackles and completed a 58-yard touchdown pass to Nelson Agholor in Week 1 against Washington. The Eagles won 30-17 that week, lost in Week 2, but then took off.
They won nine straight games, scoring at least 26 points in all of them, as Wentz threw 24 touchdowns and three interceptions. His teammates marveled at his confidence, a second-year player changing plays at the line of scrimmage based on looks he was seeing from the defense, and it usually worked. “He was able to put his brain and his thoughts out of the way and just let his athleticism show, to let him play free,” tight end Trey Burton said.
The Eagles were the best team in the NFL, showing no signs of slowing down, and they were powered by Wentz, the MVP front-runner.
“It was cool watching him take control of the league,” Smith said.
It was the third quarter of a Week 14 game against the Rams when Wentz was tackled awkwardly as he scrambled into the end zone for a touchdown. The play was called back and Wentz handled four more snaps, eventually throwing a 2-yard touchdown pass to Alshon Jeffery. He walked off the field, nobody realizing he’d just torn his ACL. “Once you hear the news it breaks your heart,” Burton said.
Wentz’s season, on a historic track, was over, and everything was about to change. Many wrote the Eagles off. Philadelphia turned to Foles, a 2012 Eagles third-round draft pick turned journeyman backup. Wentz was isolated, as NFL players are after suffering season-ending injuries. It’s a lonely feeling, and Wentz had a hard time accepting that the rest of the journey to reach the Super Bowl was going to be without him.
After the heroics of Foles (left), Wentz held the Lombardi Trophy, but it didn’t come in the way he envisioned. (Timothy A. Clary / AFP via Getty Images)
As the story goes, Wentz had a hard time supporting Foles and his teammates as they tore through the playoffs without him. According to a Philadelphia Inquirer report that came out years later, sometime before the NFC Championship against the Vikings, Wentz voiced his “displeasure” with the Eagles’ success to a group of injured players. According to the report, another player confronted him and the two had to be separated.
The idea that Wentz wasn’t supporting the Eagles while he was sidelined angers people who know him. Burton said Wentz showed his face at every practice. He was around the facility, and he supported the team during the Super Bowl.
“There was always weird stuff about him and Nick — it was just stupid,” Phillips said. “People were taking things out of context. I think there was something said one time that Carson was upset he wasn’t playing. It’s like: Is he not supposed to be upset?”
Glasser said he never heard Wentz say a negative word about Foles — “or any other player for that matter.”
“He worked so hard, he cared deeply that the team won — I know that,” Glasser said. “I know the media stuff is interesting, but from my vantage point I saw a human processing a really difficult situation in a way that was both mature and, understandably, complicated. You’re on this journey and it’s different than you expected — but you’re still happy. You’re not sad in the sense that it was someone else and not you, but sad because you saw it being you.”
Smith called it “human nature.”
“It’s very easy for them, in hindsight, to call it selfish based on everything that happened,” Smith said. “But that’s a very normal feeling of, it’s not that you’re upset at the time — you wish you were there. That’s a real thing.
“When you deal with injuries you don’t know how you’re going to respond, you don’t know if you’re going to recover,” he added. “It’s tough as a player to deal with that. I think Carson handled everything well. Everybody wants to play. No matter how we shape it, you’re a quarterback, you want to be the man on the field. That’s a tough one that people tend to forget about the human element — and competitive nature.”
Smith insists he didn’t sense negativity from Wentz, adding, “you can’t talk about the Eagles winning the Super Bowl and not talk about Carson Wentz.”
Foles recently told ex-Eagle Chris Long on Long’s podcast that, “I wouldn’t say there was tension between us … To play the year he had, to get injured and then see the team go and win a Super Bowl, that’s not easy, because he wants to be out there playing, he’s a competitor. So there’s definitely emotions that go into that. And I’ll let him speak on that. But at the end of the day, between us, it was always a respectful relationship. But drama sells, right?”
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Four nights before they faced the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII, the Eagles quarterbacks room found a way to get away. After that day’s meetings, someone in the room — Phillips thinks it was Wentz, but he’s not sure — had the idea. They went to an escape room at the Mall of America, where all the week’s Super Bowl events were taking place. The group — Wentz, Foles, Phillips, third-stringer Nate Sudfeld and assistant coach Press Taylor — had to work together to solve puzzles and find their way out.
The previous record escape time was 42 minutes; the Eagles QBs broke it. They laughed the whole time. They didn’t think about football or the weight of what was coming, of Wentz’s injury or Foles’ ascension. It’s Phillips’ favorite memory. It still makes Wentz smile.
Super Bowl prep has been going great 😎 working on our ‘escapes’ #QBEscapeRoom pic.twitter.com/L9Uc204ekR
— Carson Wentz (@cj_wentz) February 1, 2018
“It’s those relationships and memories like that that mean a lot,” Wentz said on Thursday. “Obviously it’s fun to win, it’s fun to go out and compete, that’s what everybody on the outside sees. But it’s the relationships you develop with guys on each team, whether it’s coaches, assistant coaches, players, people in the equipment room, all of those things. Now I’ve been on so many teams that when I go on the field I gotta talk to people for 20 minutes because I know the equipment guy, a coach, this or that, and it is those relationships that make this job special. The older I get, the longer I play in this league, the more I cherish those relationships.”
When Wentz returned in 2018, there was a Foles statue outside of Lincoln Financial Field. He was a folk hero, and Wentz had to prove himself all over again. He had his moments, but it was never the same.
Wentz hurt his back in 2018 and played through the pain until he couldn’t and — again — Foles took over. Foles led the Eagles to a playoff win against the Bears and nearly another against the Saints, in New Orleans, on the same field Wentz will stand on Sunday.
“Watching him go through that pain physically while also trying to deliver for the city on the field, it was tough, but in true Carson fashion he stayed in the fight, he’s still in the fight, and that’s why I love him to death,” Matthews said.
In April 2019, the Eagles signed Wentz to a four-year, $128 million contract. That offseason, a Philly Voice story vilified Wentz as a bad teammate and poor leader. He was accused of struggling to rally the locker room and quartering himself off with only his closest friends on the team. Things changed when Reich left to coach the Indianapolis Colts, and Wentz occasionally butted heads with Pederson.
Matthews said Wentz wanted to get better, even if he (or many of his teammates) didn’t agree with all of the criticism, or the way some went about criticizing him. After that article, Wentz asked Matthews what he should do, whether he should get everyone together to do something, some sort of bonding.
“He wanted to get it right,” Matthews said. “Even if I felt like some of the judgment that was rendered to him was unfair. That to me speaks more volumes than anything and I think needs to be said.”
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In 2019, Wentz got the Eagles to the playoffs, then suffered a concussion in the first quarter of his first — and to this point only — playoff game, a loss to the Seattle Seahawks. In 2020, the Eagles drafted Jalen Hurts in the second round. The two weren’t close, though Wentz attributes some of that to the nature of COVID-19 protocols from that season. Wentz struggled and so did the Eagles, who finished 4-11-1. Wentz threw his final pass for the franchise in the third quarter of a Week 13 loss at Green Bay, benched mid-game in favor of Hurts. Pederson was fired after the season ended.
At one point, Roseman had a fathead of Wentz on the wall in his office at the Eagles’ facility. Ahead of the 2021 offseason, Roseman said that “when you have players like that, they’re like fingers on your hand. You can’t imagine that they’re not part of you, that they’re not here. That’s how we feel about Carson.”
Roseman traded Wentz to the Colts that offseason. A tumultuous one-and-done season in Indianapolis was followed by another, with the Washington Commanders. Now he’s just trying to find his way back.
The Chiefs believe he still has something left in the tank. After Wentz spent 2023 backing up Matthew Stafford with the Rams, Kansas City signed him to play behind Patrick Mahomes. Chiefs offensive coordinator Matt Nagy said he’s been impressed with Wentz’s professionalism — and that he had “one of the better training camps I’ve been around. We have a lot of trust in him.”
Said head coach Andy Reid: “I’m one of his biggest fans. Selfishly, I’d like to keep him, but I don’t think that’s going to be possible. He should be starting in the league somewhere, that’s what he should be doing.”
That was supposed to be in Philadelphia. Instead, he’s a 32-year-old backup. Sometimes, Wentz catches himself thinking about the future. He’s seen what happened with Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold, highly drafted players cast aside by the teams that drafted them, only to come back around as productive NFL starters. Maybe that could be him.
Wentz still drew attention on Super Bowl LIX’s Opening Night media availability. (James Lang / Imagn Images)
On Thursday, a reporter asked Wentz if there was anything he would have changed about his time in Philadelphia.
“Probably nothing,” he said. “I feel like at the end of the day, do I wish things went differently? Without a doubt. I felt like I gave everything I had. Every time I went on that field, I laid it all out there, did the best I could. Did I make mistakes? Yes. Did we win games? Did I make plays? Yes. It was good, bad, ugly, but I don’t think there’s anything I would change in that regard.
“There’s some moments I learned from over the years just within how to be a leader and things I would’ve done differently early on, but when it comes to performance, how I worked, how I trained, how I prepared, I did everything I could.”
Wentz still believes in himself, but he’s accepted this new role, as the supportive backup, while trying to find his way back to the job he used to have, as an NFL starter. Most No. 2 quarterbacks, his veteran teammates say, don’t take scout team reps, or run through the entire game plan on their own. But that’s Wentz’s routine, to stay ready in case the Chiefs need him.
When you look at the sideline on Sunday, expect to see Wentz sprinting to stay ready, just in case he’ll have to live out his moment, the one a reporter presented to him on Thursday. Mahomes is injured. The Chiefs turn to Wentz, who leads them to a win, in the Super Bowl, against the Eagles.
Imagine that.
(Top photo: Brooke Sutton / AP Photo)
