Tag Archives: Doug Pederson

NFC Preview

05 Wednesday Sep 2018

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18-09-05 NFC-2

So having set myself this ridiculous task, it’s time to try to finish my whistle-stop previews in time for the start of the season so on to the NFC!

NFC North

The Minnesota Vikings won the division at a canter last season and whilst they might not have it all their own way this year now the Packers have Aaron Rodgers back and healthy, they are one of the fancied teams in the NFC. Having let three quarterbacks walk at the start of free agency they signed Kirk Cousins and expect to match offensive production with their fearsome defence. The offensive line is the one obvious weakness but in Mike Zimmer they have one of the best coaches in the league and I think they will be there or there about come December.

The Green Bay Packers had a down season last year thanks to Aaron Rodgers’s broken collar bone, but they will be hoping for a return to the playoffs now he’s back and healthy. A new GM saw the Packers dip into free agency more aggressively this offseason and after nine years they let go of Dom Capers and brought in Mike Pettine as a new defensive coordinator. It hard not to see the Packers in contention come the end of year as long as Rodgers stays healthy and if things gel for them they could be one of the better teams in the league.

The Detroit Lions went nine and seven but failed to make the playoffs and decided to go for a new head coach. They brought in Matt Patricia from the Patriots and a lot of the focus this year will be on just how good a coach the Belichick pupil is. Having left a team with the thirtieth ranked defence by DVOA last season , Patricia takes over a Lions team that ranked nineteenth so we shall have to see, but I like the continuity of Jim Bob Cooter staying in charge of offence and continuing his successful work with Matthew Stafford. I can’t take too much from pre-season as I didn’t see any of the starters, but they were not impressive against the Browns and they could be a candidate for a team who struggles. We’ll just have to see how things work out and a lot depends on how successfully Patricia blends what he learnt in New England with his own beliefs now he’s the man who is ultimately responsible.

I was feeling things were on the up for the Chicago Bears even before they swung the trade for Khalil Mack. I’ve seen their offence improve over the course of the pre-season and whilst I’m not necessarily convinced by Mitchell Trubisky, with the skills players the Bears brought in through free-agency and new head coach Matt Nagy’s offensive scheme the Bears almost can’t help but improve on offence. The defence was pretty good before the addition of Mack and rookie linebacker Roquan Smith so I can see why there is a buzz around this team. How many wins this will actually yield this year I don’t know, but I like the aggressive approach the Bears took having realised how short a window an NFL franchises gets to exploit having a quarterback on a rookie contract. Whilst I didn’t like how they manoeuvred to get Trubisky in the draft, I like how they surrounded him with talent this offseason. Now let’s see just how big a dividend the team gets.

NFC East

The Philadelphia Eagles come into the season with one of the strongest rosters on paper, but there are a fare few injuries floating round apart from the Carson Wentz making his way back from the ACL and LCL tears. More worrying is that the Super Bowl winning Nick Foles and the first team offence have not scored a touchdown in pre-season. I think they are still favourites for the season and after the Super Bowl win Doug Pederson had all the affirmation he needs to stick to his plans but there may be a difficult few weeks ahead.

The Dallas Cowboys have lost a lot of franchise cornerstones over the last couple of seasons and big questions remain over who Dak Prescott will be throwing the ball to so a lot rests on how well Ezekiel Elliot can run the ball. That won’t be helped by the injuries to an offensive line that has been the cornerstone of the Cowboys’ offence in recent years. Meanwhile the defence has been more impacted by whether Sean Lee plays or not than any other unit has been by a single player that is not a quarterback. I’m not ready to declare them non-competitive just yet as there is potential for them to have a good year but it would not surprise me if they do in fact struggle, particularly as Jason Garrett doesn’t fill with a lot of confidence as head coach if this team starts to have difficulties.

Washington failed to make the playoffs last season and after several seasons of franchise tagging Kirk Cousins they traded for Alex Smith and then promptly gave him an extension. I am not convinced by the roster moves over recent years and I have a feeling that Jay Gruden will likely have his team win another 7-9 games like they have the last three seasons. There have been positive noised about Smith’s performance in the pre-season and when healthy Jordan Reed has been one of the most effective tight ends in the league in the passing game but I don’t know if the changes that have been made indicate a big improvement.

The New York Giants were a car crash last season with Ben McAdoo losing the locker room, the offence failing to function minus Odell Beckham and the defence slipping to a rank of eighteenth by DVOA having been second in 2016. This year’s Giants have a new GM and head coach who doubled down on Eli Manning despite his flagging form in recent years. They brought in Nate Solder from New England to solidify their offensive line at left tackle and drafted Saquon Barkley second in the draft without trading down and ignoring the various quarterbacks they could have had. There are genuine arguments about taking even as transcendent a talent as Barkley is thought to be over a quarterback given their respective values to a team and career length, but it seems they could have also struck a deal to move down but this what they have to play with now. The worry is how much does Manning still have in the tank but the coaching situation has to better than last year and so whilst I expect an improvement, I don’t know quite how much of a step up the Giants will make. I just hope they don’t regret not grabbing a quarterback when they had the second pick in the draft, who know when they’ll next pick that high again and they certainly will be hoping it isn’t for a while.

NFC South

The NFC south was one of the most competitive division s in the NFL last season with three teams finishing with double digit wins and making the playoffs.

The New Orleans Saints had a franchise changing draft bringing in enough defensive talent to shoot their ranking up into the top ten by DVOA whilst Alvin Kamara generated 1901 yards of offence. There were whispers that Drew Brees’s arm was not quite the same but he’s still as good as any quarterback in the league and threw for four thousand yards for the twelfth straight time! Yes he’s thirty-nine, but there don’t seem to have been any serious signs of decline yet and the Saints have just traded for Teddy Bridgewater who looked excellent throwing the ball for the Jets in pre-season. I’m not sure I would have invested the amount of draft capital the Saints did to pick such a raw pass rush talent in the first round as they did in this year’s draft but I suspect they will be there or there abouts at the end of the season.

The Carolina Panthers’ experiment with changing the way Cam Newton plays failed early in the season but he now has a new offensive coordinator in Norv Turner and I will be very interested to see how this works out. They do have multiple injuries at offensive tackle so it may be a work in progress but for his occasionally maddening accuracy issues, Newton is an effective quarterback in the style that he plays. If the defence continues to be in the top ten by DVOA then I would feel confident in saying that the Panthers will contend. My only concern is that for the last six years the Panthers have alternated double digit win seasons with seven win seasons, although one of them did net a playoff appearance. I certainly don’t believe this constitutes a pattern that is going to suddenly manifest itself in a seven win season but I do worry about their Panthers consistency from year to year. As ever we shall just have to see what the season holds.

The Atlanta Falcons were coming off a difficult Super Bowl loss last season and losing their offensive coordinator to the San Francisco 49ers. They were still a good team but the offence didn’t quite flow under Steve Sarkiesian but the defence continued to shape up under head coach Dan Quinn’s direction and they made it to the playoffs once more. Having adjusted Julio Jones’s contract and extended Matt Ryan’s contract the Falcons look set to challenge once again this season and may feel they weren’t far away last season in the playoffs.

The other team in the NFC South very much feel like the other team. Head coach Dirk Koetter was promoted because of his relationship with Jameis Winston who so desperately wants to be a leader but hasn’t quite managed that or to develop his play. Winston starts the season on suspension after groping an Uber driver and this franchise feels like it is disarray and it would not exactly surprise me if this team struggles all season. We shall have to see how the season plays out and it wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong, but come the end of the year I suspect it could be all change for the Buccaneers.

NFC West

Last season’s surprise package in the NFC were the LA Rams who were transformed by young head coach Sean McVay who overhauled the offence to reignite Todd Gurley and rescue Jared Goff from the category of draft bust whilst leaving Wade Phillip alone to run the defence. Not content with making it to the playoffs last season they added Marcus Peters, Aqib Talib, Sam Shields, and Ndamukong Suh to the defence. It’s clear they have faith in Wade Phillips to control that combustible mix of personalities but there is no doubting these players talent and if both sides of the ball live up to expectations they will be one of the more formidable teams in the league. I’m not sure if it is possible to live up to some of the hype but the Rams would be my pick as favourite for this division.

The Seattle Seahawks had a tough time last year as injuries hobbled the legion of boom and it has been all change for the franchise in the offseason. Not a lot is expected of them, particularly with Earl Thomas holding out but I’m ready to give up on Pete Carroll just yet. The offensive line might finally have solidified a little according to those watching closely and Rashaad Penny, the Seahawks’ rookie running back, has been turning heads in pre-season. As has Australian rookie punter Michael Dickson who managed to kick two fifty yard plus punts out of bounds within the five yard line in one game. I’m not prepared to guarantee anything other than a competitive team, but I think they could surprise a few people this season.

The Arizona Cardinals seem a strange prospect for me without Bruce Arians never mind having to find a new starting quarterback. We know that Sam Bradford is unlikely to make it through the season without getting injured and that receiving legend Larry Fitzgerald deservers a better team, but David Johnson is returning from a wrist injury and so he should get back to something like his previous form. However, with a new coaching staff and so much turmoil it feels like whilst this team in transition might rally round and surprise people, it could also really struggle and something says to me that struggle is the more likely option. I always want to see teams and players do well so I hope to be proved wrong.

Finally, in this two day scramble of writing madness we come to the only team with a quarterback who has an undefeated starting record in the NFL. It is a small sample size so whilst I’m certain that Jimmy Garoppolo’s steak won’t continue throughout this season, the hope that he and first year head coach Kyle Shanahan gave last year will continue to come to fruition this year. However, they have already lost running back Jerick McKinnon to an ACL injury and it’s worth remembering the place that the 49ers started from when John Lynch came in to be Shanahan’s GM last year. I expect the 49ers to be competitive even if they can’t replicate the five game winning streak from the end of last year’s season but the fans from San Francisco may have to wait until next season to return to the playoffs given the size of the rebuild job that had to be taken on. I wouldn’t necessarily put any money on that though…

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AAF: Eagles’ Offence

03 Saturday Feb 2018

Posted by in Amateur Adventures in Film, Playoffs

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With the big game taking place tomorrow night, I have spent the last couple of days taking a look at the coaching tape from the Philadelphia Eagle’s big win over Minnesota Vikings in the NFC conference championship game.

This was an interesting to look at as for much of this game if felt like there was not as much between the Vikings defence and the Eagles offence as I felt when first watching the game. However, the Eagles were able to move the ball effectively for a lot of  the contest and it was a couple of bad plays in the secondary that really stretched the score line in the Eagles favour alongside the Vikings’ inability to move the ball with their offence.

The Eagles were able to run the ball effectively thanks to a combination of LeGarrette Blount and Jay Ajayi with Corey Clement also chipping in with some nice plays as a third running back. This genuine run threat allowed the Eagles to make effective use of play action and RPO. Now there has been a lot of talk read-pass-option in the NFL recently and so it is clearly an area I need to read up on in it a bit. The basic idea is that you have a play where the quarterback can either throw or handoff the ball depending on how the defence lines up. I certainly saw plays that would fit the bill and you do generally see more quick pass plays with the offensive line run blocking these days that would seem to fit the bill. I am a little hesitant to be too definitive as I don’t have the benefit of knowing the play calls or extensive discussions with coaches to help me pick them out on game tape (these posts are called amateur adventures in film for a reason) but I can see how it would be effective in the hands of the right quarterback.

RPOs are one way to attack a team, as is misdirection and that is definitely something Doug Pederson brought to his offence in this game. There was a lot of pre-snap motion from tight ends or receiver Nelson Agholor who ran as many fake runs as he did taking the ball from Nick Foles.

In fact this seems like a good time to talk about backup quarterback Nick Foles as he was really good in this game and not just from running quick pass plays. The impressive thing was how he was able to hold the ball on third down and find receivers. The pass towards the end of the second half that saw Alshon Jeffery score a fifty-three yard touchdown was nice but thirty-nine year old corner Terance Newman was beaten pretty easily for Jeffery to get behind the defence. However, there were other really nice throws where he had to show good pocket presence or roll out to throw the ball and I think my favourite play was the flea flicker that the Eagles ran in the third quarter to Torrey Smith who beat Trae Waynes on a stop go route, which combined with the hand off of the flea flicker was pretty devastating, and Foles was able to lead Smith into the end zone with the throw so that Harrison Smith playing deep safety on this play couldn’t get across to stop it.

The fourth quarter saw the Eagles run out a lot of clock effectively with a single back formation with an extra offensive lineman and two tight ends, but part of the effectiveness was the ability of Jay Ajayi to attack the edges of the defence although he is a powerful back can make yards go up the middle.

One of the things I’m most curious about for the Super Bowl is to see Pederson and his staff go up against Belichick and his coaches.  It should be a really well coached Super Bowl and the Eagles’ offence has a lot of tools that you can use to attack a defence that has given up a lot of yards this season. Much rests on how close to this performance Nick Foles can get, but I saw a lot to like as I will write about tomorrow when I preview the game.

Finally, this is a tough one for the Vikings who had a couple of injuries and a couple of bad plays, but they weren’t so far away from competing in this game but it was a bad timing for their performance level to drop for what has been one of the best defences in the league this year. This is one of the big reasons why they will be sat at home watching with the rest of us tomorrow.

Fallen at the Final Hurdle

28 Sunday Jan 2018

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So between illness and life it feels like a while since I’ve had a chance to sit down and get things written for the blog or said on the podcast.

The conference championship games from last weekend produced one blow out and once close contest, and the two losers have very different problems to face in the offseason although both have questions surrounding their quarterbacks.

In the first game the Jacksonville Jaguars fell to a seemingly inevitable Tom Brady comeback that put the New Patriots back into the Super Bowl again. I say again as this is the eighth time that Brady and Belichick have made the final game since 2001 but more on that next week. The Patriots had to stage another comeback because for a large chunk of this game the Jaguars were in the lead. In fact they took the lead at the start of the second quarter and didn’t relinquish it until 2:48 in the fourth quarter. The defence looked to control the Patriots whilst Blake Bortles looked good, throwing for nearly three hundred yards and a touchdown without turning the ball over. There has been much discussion of the decision to kneel with fifty second left in the second quarter and I agree that this was a contributing factor but the problem for me arose in the second half for the Jaguars’ offence. I’ve heard some say that the play calling was to conservative and others that the Patriots adjusted and that the Jaguars ran out of plays. It is hard for me to comment on how many passing plays the Jaguars had prepared, but the run on first down and lack of play action short throws did make it feel like the Jaguars were trying to protect their lead late in the game when I was watching this game for the first time. I’m going to go back and look at the Jaguars offence on coaching tape to see what happened this week so I might come back to this later.

The Jaguars themselves felt like they were the better roster after this game and couldn’t quite believe that they lost, but once again the Patriots proved themselves to be the masters of situational football and this is a team game. The good news is that the Jaguars have made plenty of progress and have a young foundation to build upon next year. As I watched the game I was thinking that Bortles had taken a step having come through two games of playoff pressure, but with an option that pays him nineteen million dollars next season, there still seems to be a lot of expectation that he might not be retained. I don’t really want to second guess this, but it will be the big turning point of the Jaguars’ offseason as they can either exercise the nineteen million option, sign him to a long term deal or cut him. There is nothing to say that he won’t sign a long term deal at a number that helps the Jaguars continue to build a team, after all that is what Brady has done, but I suspect regardless of what happens with the quarterback, this team will be making noise next year. The question is where the offence can live up to the standards the defence has set this season.

The second game started well for the Minnesota Vikings, with them taking a 7-0 lead and moving the ball well until Case Keenum had his throwing motion altered by the Eagle’s Chris Long on a play in the second Vikings’ drive that caused Keenum to throw an interception and then things fell spectacularly apart. The Vikings were not to score another point as the Philadelphia Eagles ran out easy 38-7 winners.

There must be a familiar sense of doom for Vikings fans given their history of tough playoff losses but following their miracle win the week before, the Vikings just couldn’t find a way to compete. On offence they simply were unable to cope with the depth of the Eagles’ defensive line and the pass rush stopped what had been a formidable offence as Stefon Diggs and Adam Thielen can’t do much if Case Keenum can’t get them the ball. The Vikings quarterback only took one sack but was not comfortable and the Vikings could keep their offence balanced as they fell further behind the Eagles.

Perhaps more surprising was how much the Vikings defence struggled against the Eagles’ offence. This was a unit that had been historically good on third down this season ranked second by DVOA with a far more even split between rush and pass defence than the Jaguars ranked above them. However, Doug Pederson found a way to maximise the abilities of his backup quarterback (albeit a highly qualified one) and demonstrated a big improvement from the previous week’s narrow win over the Falcons. This was a matchup I was really looking forward to as Zimmer is one of the best defensive minds in the game but he seemed to have no answer to the Eagles in this game. The loss of Andrew Sandejo in the game had a dentrimental effect and was something I noticed when he went out against the Saints the week before, and Xavier Rhodes was also struggling with a toe injury that saw him leave the for a stretch and although he battled, the defence clearly struggled. I’ll be taking a look at the Eagles offence next week as I prep for the Super Bowl so these injuries will be worth paying attention to then.

The tough thing for the Vikings as they head into the offseason is that not only do they currently have three quarterbacks going into free agency, but they have an established defence with many players already getting paid and a pair of linebacker starters expiring at the end of next season. This means they can’t really afford to wait around on developing a quarterback but with the multiple injuries of Sam Bradford meaning you can’t rely on him to play, the fact that Teddy Bridgewater has barely played in two years thanks to his horrific knee injury, and Case Keenum only having a year of quality starting who do you sign and at what size contract is a huge question. That’s if the Vikings even stick to the quarterbacks on their roster, but with offensive co-ordinator Pat Shurmur moving on to become the head coach of the New York Giants the Vikings will have a new offensive co-ordinator who they will be picking from those still available. The impressive thing Shurmur managed this year was to build a functioning offensive line and make the most out of a starting quarterback who had not achieved to this level before. An offseason of change on offence awaits and whilst it is certainly not impossible that the Vikings will be good on offence again next season given the quality of skill players theu have, Mike Zimmer and his staff face a big challenge going into next season. I have a lot of faith in Zimmer and I’m not saying they can’t do it, but you wouldn’t necessary count on it and with Aaron Rodgers coming back from the injury for the Green Bay Packers the NFC North could be a hard division for the Vikings to win again next season.

Conference Championship Games

21 Sunday Jan 2018

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Jacksonville Jaguars @ New England Patriots

This weekend’s games start with the boisterously confident Jaguars travelling to face a Patriots team who seem as buttoned down as ever despite the ESPN story that broke about tensions between the owner, his head coach and their half of fame quarterback.

The Patriots made short work of the Titans last week and have seemed destined for the AFC championship game for most of the season. The defence may have struggled early in the season and finished ranked thirty-first by DVOA but they also gave up the fifth fewest points in the regular season and look to be good enough when paired with the number one offence in the league. Lots of people are familiar with the Bill Belichick’s defensive approach of taking away what a team does best and you imagine that they will be focussing on stopping the run and making Blake Bortles beat them with his arm. We could even see them focussing on containing Bortles in the pocket as Belichick acknowledged his running ability, although you can’t exactly rely on what little information you get out of a Belichick press conference.

On the other side of the ball the numbers still seem to be there for Tom Brady who has had a couple of niggling injuries this season and had another scare this week when he jammed his hand in practise. There has been a lot of speculation regarding Brady’s hand but the reports are that he sustained a cut to his thumb in practice and that has had to be stitched, but Brady practised Friday and should start the game. The big mismatch for the Patriots’ offence will be Gronkowski as it usually is, but they will face a stern test from the best defence in the league by DVOA. If there is a formula for beating Brady in the playoffs it involves being able to get pressure with four and good coverage. The Jaguars have the players to do this but the Patriots are likely to use bigger personnel packages to challenge the defence and take advantage of a rush defence that finished the regular season ranked twenty-sixth by DVOA.

The Jaguars come into this game full of confidence having won their first two playoff games in a long time but their defence whilst ranking number one in pass defence by DVOA, only ranks twentieth against tight ends and fifteenth against running backs when looking at DVOA against specific types of receiver. The Jaguars already have a tendency to rush four and cover as mentioned above, but if they can’t stop Brady finding his tight ends and running backs then we know Brady has the patience and skill to keep picking up short gains and drive the length of the field to score.

The offence for the Jaguars looked much better last week and they used play action well to get Bortles throws he is comfortable with. A lot will rest on Leonard Fournette’s ankle and whether he can play as he did in the first quarter of last week’s game. That said, whilst TJ Yeldon is a very different running back that might lack the power of Fournette to take on stacked fronts, he proved effective catching the ball against the Steelers and had three times for fifty-seven yards giving him the most receiving yards in the game. If Bortles can continue to spread the ball around like he did last week then the Jaguars might be able to eke out the points they need, but you have to think that he will facing a Patriots defence that will be disciplined in their run defence, focussing on not allowing Bortles to scramble as well as the running backs, and try to make Bortles beat them by making accurate throws into tight windows.

I think that most people would still give the edge to the Patriots but the Jaguars faced that last week as well and they are probably the team the Patriots least wanted to face given their resemblance to other teams that have beaten them in the post-season in the past. It should be a fascinating game.

Minnesota Vikings @ Philadelphia Eagles

The NFC conference game pits the first seed Eagles against the second seed Vikings who finished the season with the same 13-3 record and who were the fourth and fifth ranked teams by DVOA at the end of the regular season.

The Eagles eked out a win last week against the Falcons on the back off a controlled offence performance and a defence that kept the Falcons from getting two hundred yards passing or one hundred yards rushing. The Eagles defence finished the season ranked fifth in the league by DVOA and were top ten against both the run and the pass. The strength of the defence is their line and in Fletcher Cox they have one of the best interior linemen in the league. They will try to pressure the Vikings and will need to as their secondary could struggle to contain the Vikings’ excellent receivers.

However, if the Eagles are to win this game then their offence has to do a job with their backup quarterback. The game plan last week was to run the ball to control the game and give Nick Foles the kind of throws he can make to win the game. They may have only scored fifteen points with one touchdown and run the ball eighty-six yards but it was enough for them to the win. In Nick Foles they have a backup with a lot more experience than most and whilst no one expects him to replicate the amazing form he had for one year under Chip Kelly, the Eagles have proved they can be competitive with him. However, they are facing a fearsome defence that is co-ordinated by one of the best defensive minds in the game.

The Vikings defence finished the season ranked second in the league by DVOA and excellent players at all three levels of the defence. They may show blitz a lot with Mike Zimmer’s trademark double A gap look where two linebackers line up on the defensive line from where they can then blitz or drop into coverage. Unlike the Jaguars’ number one unit, the Vikings are pretty evenly balanced against the run and the pass so this scheme matchup of Zimmer against Doug Pederson and his offensive staff should be an intriguing schematic battle.

The Vikings offence has played remarkably well when you consider that they have lost both a starting quarterback and running back. Still, Case Keenum has been playing since week two of the regular season and has had a really productive break out season culminating in a last second win last week. He is ably helped by one of the best pairings of receivers in the league and the Eagles will have their work cut out to cover both Stefon Diggs and Adam Thielen. The Vikings may not run the ball brilliantly, in fact they only ranked seventeenth by DVOA, but they do it often and well enough for it to enable their play fakes to be effective and so they will try to keep the Eagles defence guessing.

The Vikings will be without their home field advantage but were competitive on the road and I think have a slight edge in this game with the Eagles not having Carson Wentz. However, if the Eagles stay in this game the Philadelphia crowd will make life very difficult and this could be a very close game.

AAF: Carson Wentz

25 Sunday Sep 2016

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So I thought I would take a closer look at Carson Wentz this week given that he has led the Eagles to a 2-0 stretch.

I’ve heard several people I respect break down what has been working for Wentz, but I will try to base this only on what I was able to see on tape for myself, but I suspect it will sound similar.

In a 29-14 road victory over the Chicago Bears, Wentz’s number did not look spectacular as he threw for a mere one hundred and ninety yards on twenty-one completion from thirty-four attempts with one touchdown and no interceptions, but there was much more going on than these numbers might suggest.

For starters, at the beginning of the game, in his first regular season road game, Wentz started his opening drive with a series of empty backfield passing plays. He completed the majority of them with quick throws that allowed him to quickly select a receiver and make the pass. However, it has to be said that he was clearly in complete control of the offence, certainly appearing to make adjustments and looking like a quarterback who has been playing in the NFL for years.

It has to be said that it did not look like he was not being asked to go through complex progressions, seemingly work with fairly straight forward reads and a fair amount of play action passes, but this looked to be a feature of good coaching. It is in fact to head coach Doug Pederson and offensive coordinator Frank Reich’s credit that they have schemed so well for their young quarterback. He was not being asked to do much more than three or five step drop passes, or work from shotgun, but he was in clear command of what he was being asked to do.

I can’t say that his arm amazed you with the throws he made, but to be honest all the talk of cannons for arms seems to be overdone when evaluating quarterbacks and despite one hopping a couple of passes under pressure, there were no problems for Wentz in delivery catchable balls. In fact there were at least two drops I noted, one of which really should have been a touchdown to Jordan Mathews as the pass was dropped in nicely as he ran into the end zone. My only real concerns were that Wentz took a couple of unnecessary hits on scrambles, which I’m sure his coaches will want him to protect himself from, and that the offence was not terribly efficient in the red zone, only getting three field goals in the first half.

All in all though, Carson Wentz looks like he could turn himself into a very good NFL quarterback, and it really is very impressive to see him in such control of the offence so early in his career. The big tests are yet to come, starting this evening against the Pittsburgh Steelers, but he certainly has done pretty much as well as you could have asked of a rookie quarterback thrown into the starting line-up straight away.