Murphy: We'll see if Eagles or Browns were right about Wentz

SOMEWHERE WITHIN the realm of possibility is a scenario in which Sunday's meeting between the Browns and Eagles features the first of many postgame handshakes that Doug Pederson and Hue Jackson will exchange over the next decade. Ten years from now, we might look back and reminisce about this early showdown between the deans of the NFL head-coaching ranks. Funny how it all works out, we might say to one another.

At this point, though, the far more likely scenario is that Pederson and Jackson say hello and goodbye on Sunday afternoon and then turn things over to the quarterback who holds each of their fates in his hands. If Carson Wentz is who the Browns thought he was when they passed on the opportunity to select the North Dakota State star with the No. 2 pick, it is difficult to envision Pederson's first head-coaching stint ending in any manner other than flames. And if Wentz is who the Eagles thought he was when they traded five picks to the Browns to move up and draft him, it is difficult to envision a scenario in which Jackson and his bosses are granted enough time to see their rebuilding project through to fruition.

The fact that Wentz's first start will come against the team that chose to select no quarterback rather than him only heightens the drama. In a conference call with Philadelphia media members on Wednesday, Jackson did his best to downplay the narrative, insisting that the Browns evaluated Wentz "as a really good player" before the draft.

"But," the Browns' first-year head coach continued, "at that time, we felt it was best to go in a different direction."

Yet the decisions the Eagles and Browns made when they traded with each other are not ones easily spun away. The Eagles' hunger for a player who could stabilize the quarterback position wasn't any greater than the one that burned inside the Browns. Everybody in the NFL understands the inestimable value that a franchise-caliber signal-caller provides to a team. Everybody in the NFL understands how rare it is to find oneself in a position to draft one. Five years ago, when he was the head coach of the Raiders, Jackson encouraged his front office to trade a first- and second- round pick for Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer, who was threatening to retire rather than return to Cincinnati (that didn't end well). The Browns simply decided that Wentz was not a franchise quarterback. The Eagles decided he was.

Somebody will be right. Somebody will be wrong. At least, that's what the odds say. Maybe the Browns draft their own franchise quarterback with one of their two first-round picks next year, and maybe that guy squares off against Wentz in the next five Super Bowls. Maybe Wentz never reaches his potential but Chase Daniel turns into Doug Flutie. But trades such as the one that the Browns and Eagles agreed to in April tend to carry certain repercussions. Very rarely do both sides emerge a winner. The Eagles and Browns were always going to be linked. Maybe not Sam Bowie and Michael Jordan, but that kind of potential.

Is that fair? Probably not. Chances are, the Browns saw the same things on film that the Eagles saw: a guy with great physical tools and huge potential, but one who'd started just a season-and-a-half's worth of games in college football's minor league and thus left them with uncertainty as they attempted to project him against bigger, faster, stronger athletes and their complex coverage and blitz schemes. That is to say that they might have graded his upside similarly to the way the Eagles graded it, but decided that drafting him at No. 2 required them to take on too much risk.

That was what personnel chief Sashi Brown told reporters in a news conference after the trade.

"As always, there is a risk when you are drafting any quarterback and even if you're drafting a quarterback in the first or second slot in the first round that they pan out or don't, and we understand that risk in moving back that we may have passed on a quarterback that is going to go on to certainly have a great career in this league," Brown said.

In July, Browns chief strategy officer Paul DePodesta made headlines when he suggested in a radio interview that the club did not view Wentz as a "top 20" NFL quarterback. But the point he was attempting to make was more about the risk inherent when a team drafts a player at the position.

"In a given year, there may be two or three NFL-ready quarterbacks at the college level," DePodesta told WKNR-850 AM. "In another year, there literally may be zero. There just may be not be anybody in that year who's good enough to be a top 20 quarterback in the NFL."

Regardless of his talent, Wentz was far less "NFL ready" coming out of college than players such as Andrew Luck and Jameis Winston, who were as close to a sure thing as you can find at the position. DePodesta made his name as one of Billy Beane's Moneyball crew in the Oakland A's front office, where the organization viewed players as commodities, attempting to quantify the risk and future value involved in any transaction.

"We have to make judgments on the individual players and we're not always going to be right," DePodesta said. "But in this particular case, we just didn't feel it was necessarily the right bet to make for us at this time. Again, it comes down to individual evaluation of a player. We will not always be right on those type of things."

In the NFL, though, it's tough to be wrong about a quarterback and keep your job.

"At that time, he wasn't the right fit for us," Jackson said. "It has nothing to do with Carson. I think Carson's a tremendous person, player and is going to have a bright future. Just at that time, we decided to go in a different direction."

On Sunday, they'll face a team that chose the opposite direction. Where they end up is anybody's guess.

@ByDavidMurphy

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