Latest Wentz injury shows Eagles traded former QB due to more than just rift with Pederson | You Pod to Win the Game

Yahoo Sports’ Senior NFL Writers Charles Robinson and Frank Schwab discuss the foot injury for Colts quarterback Carson Wentz. Indianapolis’ new QB will miss from 5-12 weeks. How will this affect an up and coming Colts squad? What does this mean for Wentz’s future with the Colts and the league? How smart do the Eagles look for cutting ties with the often injured signal caller?

Video Transcript

CHARLES ROBINSON: Maybe we didn't know it at the time, but the Eagles were being decisive in saying, you know what? This guy's never going to be healthy. It's never going to be right for us with him.

This was the one thing that we did not quantify enough in the draft evaluation of him, the fact that he was really never healthy since his senior year of high school. He'd had this multitude of things. And it's not going to ever change with us.

And so they took the decisive path and moved him. In a weird way, we applauded some of these other situations where decisive action was taken. In San Francisco, fine-- you don't believe Jimmy's your guy? Be decisive, move up, and get the guy who you think is your guy.

You don't think Jared Goff's your guy, the Los Angeles Rams? Great, you went and got Matt Stafford. And you were decisive. Maybe the Eagles were actually being decisive, not in choosing Jalen Hurts, but choosing not to continue to strap themselves to Carson Wentz, because they're like, the guy's never healthy. And if he's never healthy, we're never going to get there with them.

FRANK SCHWAB: Yeah, and I usually treat, like, injury-prone like a myth, because we put these labels on every guy who gets a couple of-- remember Matthew Stafford was injury prone, right? I mean, and he ends up being pretty durable over his [INAUDIBLE]--

CHARLES ROBINSON: These guys are pretty injury-prone, Frank. Come on.

FRANK SCHWAB: Who-- Carson? Yeah, but that's what I mean. There's a few guys whose bodies just can't handle the NFL. And I think this is it.

Like, I just-- it stinks because I was really high on the Colts. I was really excited to watch them. I had them fifth in my power ranking. I thought that this team legitimately could have [? won the ?] Super Bowl.

They had everything around the quarterback position you could ask for. Great offensive line, great running game-- I think up-and-coming receivers. Defense was really, really well-coached by Eberflus. And then, quarterback goes down.

And you're like, oh, yeah, this team is really going to fall apart. Everybody rips a team that doesn't have a great backup quarterback when their starter goes. I mean, yeah, there's not that many great backups in the league. What are you going to do? There's only a handful of guys that could even play at the starting position well, much less backups.

So I think the Colts were just all in on this Wentz thing. He goes down, and it's like, ugh, Jacob Eason, come on down. We're going to finish, you know, 4 and 13.

CHARLES ROBINSON: Well, and--

FRANK SCHWAB: I don't think it'll be that bad, by the way.

CHARLES ROBINSON: Yeah, I think the talent's too good for them to be-- even if they were, like, hey, you know, we're going to throw it 15 times a game. We're going to run it the rest of the time.

FRANK SCHWAB: [INAUDIBLE] what they have to do.

CHARLES ROBINSON: They're a good enough team offensively, particularly on the line, and defensively that they could still probably win a lot of games that way. I just think there's a lot more there to kind of criticize with Carson Wentz that maybe we never knew before, and now we're seeing it. And it's not just the injuries. It's hard to coach a guy who's not there and available. It's hard to coach a guy who's always coming in and out of some kind of an injury, and you're just trying to get him into a rhythm.

FRANK SCHWAB: But I also bought into Frank Reich can get to him because he--

CHARLES ROBINSON: Oh, I did, too.

FRANK SCHWAB: --they had this great relationship. And they had this connection. And it was a perfect-- so I sit here, and, as dumb as the sounds today, I still think it was a good trade. I still think that's the move they had to make.

It didn't work out-- I mean, to this point. I mean, who knows how it's going to work out the rest of the way? But, as I sit here, I say, look at the quarterback landscape. Look at what their options were.

They're drafting way down, you know, 20-whatever. They're not going to get a guy there. What are you going to do? Wentz came at a pretty good price. And I thought-- I truly, in my heart of hearts, thought, Reich can turn this guy around. He can fix him.

He's never going to be great again. He's never going to be that MVP guy we saw in 2017. But could he be the guy we saw in '18, '19, when he was average behind a bad supporting cast? Yeah, he could have been that guy.

Not now-- I mean-- and now it's all you look back with this knowledge about him getting hurt again. And you're like, how could they have invested in this guy who can't-- he's never stayed healthy. Like you said, all the way back [? for a ?] senior in high school, how could you invest and put all of your eggs in the Carson Wentz basket?

CHARLES ROBINSON: It's funny, too, because I distinctly remember that being, like, the third or fourth bullet point. When I remember talking to teams about him, it was just this trailing idea that was sort of thrown in there-- yeah, you know, health is also a concern, too. But teams, I feel like they will, particularly when they lock on to a guy, they will find reasons to kind of pooh-pooh the health issues. They'll say, well, it was this. That was a fluke. Or that was-- ah, [INAUDIBLE]--

FRANK SCHWAB: And sometimes that's true, Charles. Sometimes that's true.

CHARLES ROBINSON: Yeah.

FRANK SCHWAB: Injuries can be flaky in the NFL.

CHARLES ROBINSON: Wasn't true this time.