Eagles developing Wentz's pocket mobility | David Murphy
Carson Wentzs ability to move with the pocket while looking for receivers will go a long way toward determining his success
THERE WAS a moment during Monday's practice when Carson Wentz found himself in a situation that his Eagles coaches had been drilling him on for much of the previous year. During an 11-on-11 play with the rest of the starters, the second-year quarterback found himself sliding forward in an ample pocket on the left side of his offensive line. In those situations, his offensive coordinator had said earlier, a quarterback can feel tempted to move too quickly, and end up sliding himself too close to the line of scrimmage, or into a swarm of defenders that didn't need to exist.
"There's so many times, where you get enough field, to rush, and you want to climb in the pocket," explained Frank Reich, the offensive coordinator and former Bills quarterback. "Well, it's easy once you start climbing just to keep climbing . . . and all of a sudden your momentum takes you further than you need to."
Great quarterbacks come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, with all sorts of tool sets. But one thing they all have in common is the way they use their lower halves to move with the pocket to maximize the time they are able to look downfield and position themselves in an optimal throwing position. As an assistant coach for the Colts from 2008-10, Reich worked with one of the best of all time in Peyton Manning, who led the league in fewest sacks per pass attempt in five of his 17 seasons. While notoriously immobile outside of the pocket, there was a level of artistry to his movements between the tackles, an uncanny ability to feel the pass rush while keeping his eyes downfield.
On Monday, Wentz ended up putting himself in good enough position to zip a strike to Torrey Smith as the veteran settled into a pocket in the zone 15 yards downfield. But his ceiling as an NFL quarterback will hinge largely on the continued development of that footwork and feel in the pocket.
Going back to his days at North Dakota State, Wentz's game tape shows a quarterback with an intuitive feel for some of those subtleties. That's important because, as Reich acknowledged on Monday, a healthy chunk of the ability is innate. Wentz has some of the innate stuff. He moves confidently, keeping his eyes and body locked downfield while showing an intuitive sense for what is going on around him. There is a body language you can detect in a quarterback who is not overwhelmed by the mayhem unfolding around him, or by what he sees downfield. The bad quarterbacks drop back as if they are retreating and then never break that defensive stance; there is an anxiousness to their play, as if they are in survival mode, instead of on the offensive. On the field, Wentz's movements project an air of calm confidence that suggests he is in command of the defense and not it of him.
"Just little subtle movements in the pocket are very important for the quarterback," Reich said. "And then to be able to reset and throw with accuracy."
Wentz's eventual location on the spectrum of NFL quarterbacks will depend largely on how much of the learnable stuff he develops. The NFL doesn't move fast only from week to week, but also from year to year. In that sense, Wentz entered the NFL behind guys such as Jameis Winston and Andrew Luck just based on the disparity of the reps and the speed of the game he experienced in college, and, as he said on Monday, there's no substitute for time when it comes to calibrating the internal clock and muscle memory that enable a quarterback to feel the rush without looking at it.
"You'll always be working that out," Wentz said. "It's a process. It's a feel thing."
But the Eagles think they can make up for that lost time. Since Wentz's arrival in Philadelphia, the triumvirate of head coach Doug Pederson, Reich and quarterbacks coach John DeFelippo have worked hard to build upon his innate framework, while also massaging out the lesser of his habits.
"Carson got to play a lot of football last year, which is a huge plus," Reich said. "The other thing you can do is you can drill it, you can drill it, you can try to simulate the game. It's not the exact same, but I think we do a pretty good job. Coach DeFilippo does a really good job of simulating that as much as he can in practice."
Imagine that you are standing on a stage, with a spotlight above your head, and that the spotlight is shining such that your feet are in the center of the bright yellow circle it casts upon the stage floor. Now, imagine that the yellow circle starts to slide across the stage floor in random directions, speeding up and shrinking with each passing second.
Imagine trying to stay inside that circle while holding a football and deciding which of four receivers you should target.
Substitute a patch of grass for the circle of light and that's kind of what it's like to navigate an NFL pocket. It isn't easy. There's a reason quarterbacks often take five years to reach their peak.
"It's huge," Wentz said. "It's crucial."
@ByDavidMurphy