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Murphy: Wentz vs. Prescott, let the arguments begin

IT ALL STARTS with the offensive line, Doug Pederson said from the lectern, and the congregation nodded as if the observation was indisputable, the way they might have if he'd said "God is good," or "Somebody should do a commercial that examines how Peyton Manning spends his newly acquired free time, he's just so homespun and relatable, isn't he?"

IT ALL STARTS with the offensive line, Doug Pederson said from the lectern, and the congregation nodded as if the observation was indisputable, the way they might have if he'd said "God is good," or "Somebody should do a commercial that examines how Peyton Manning spends his newly acquired free time, he's just so homespun and relatable, isn't he?"

In this instance, Pederson was talking about Dak Prescott, but he just as easily could have been speaking about his own rookie quarterback. In the NFL, the wisdom doesn't get much more conventional than, "It all starts up front," and a rigorous inspection of the anecdotal evidence suggests such claims are more or less accurate.

And yet, the headlines are already written, aren't they? XXXX leads XXXX to victory over XXXX in battle between rookie stars. They'll appear on Sunday, around 11:45/10:45 central, adjusted for market and veracity, same as they were last Sunday, when Carson Wentz overcame his early mistakes to defeat Sam Bradford, who was the loser on the scoreboard and thus the loser in the big picture, which dictates that the better quarterback is the one who wins the game, regardless of how the other 42 players on the field fared in their assignments, or even how the quarterbacks themselves fared en route to the end result.

For all the time we as football fans devote to dissecting the sport's innards, a sentence like, "Offensive line leads Prescott, Cowboys to crucial division victory" is not something we often read in the wake of games like the one that is scheduled to go down at Jerry Jones' Bulbous Monstrosity of Fun and Taxpayer Waste on Sunday night. Eagles-Cowboys, Wentz-Prescott, tomato-tomahto, potato-potahto.

Really, though, Sunday night is less about Quarterback A proving himself against Quarterback B and more about the different paths the two teams took to this showdown, the Cowboys taking Prescott at No. 135 overall after drafting Ezekiel Elliot at No. 4 overall and three more players in the second, third and fourth rounds, and the Eagles spending two firsts, a second- and a third-rounder to move up and select Wentz. While the Eagles' strategy was essentially build from the quarterback up, the Cowboys turned to Prescott needing him simply to be a final piece in a puzzle that already included the aforementioned offensive line, a running back position where Elliot is averaging 5.1 yards per carry and 117.2 yards per game thanks to a noticeable improvement in patience and vision over the last four weeks, and a pass-catching department where Dez Bryant is expected to return from injury this week and where Jason Witten's remarkable and HOF-worthy career just keeps on ticking.

What's notable is the manner in which the Cowboys managed to acquire all of this talent that their young signal-caller has had the benefit of leaning on: Five first-round picks (Elliot at No. 4, Bryant at No. 24, LT Tyron Smith at No. 9, RG Zack Martin at No. 16, and C Travis Frederick at No. 31) and three third-round picks (Witten, WR Terrance Williams, and backup tackle Chaz Green). In fact, Prescott, whom the Cowboys selected in the fourth round this past April, was drafted lower than all but two of the 10 players who project to surround him on Sunday night (the exceptions: LG Ronald Leary, undrafted in 2012, and slot man Cole Beasley, undrafted in 2012).

Compare that with the composition of the Eagles' roster around Wentz. Of the 10 players who project to surround him on Sunday, only one was drafted by the Eagles in the first round (WR Nelson Agholor, at No. 15), and only three or four in the first three rounds (Zach Ertz and Jordan Matthews in the second and Josh Huff in the third). Even when you factor suspended tackle Lane Johnson into the picture, you're still left with a nearly inverted picture of the offense on the other sideline.

Whereas the Cowboys are asking their rookie QB to be the final piece of a puzzle that features eight starters under the age of 29, the Eagles are asking Wentz to be one of the first pieces of what they hope to build. In fact, Johnson, Matthews, Ertz and 27-year-old guard Brandon Brooks are the only members of the current thing who have clearly established themselves as components of the future thing. It's safe to say that Ryan Mathews and Darren Sproles aren't, correct? It's hard to make a straight-faced case for Huff, and for whatever flashes they show every few weeks or so, Agholor and Dorial Green-Beckham are only a year behind the WYSIWYG status we've bestowed upon Huff midway through his third NFL season. Brent Celek is 31, Jason Peters is 34, Allen Barbre is 32. Even if you think Jason Kelce has several good years left as an NFL-caliber center, that still leaves the Eagles with four pretty important positions to fill and no clear heir apparents: Wendell Smallwood might prove to be the guy at running back, Halapoulivaati Vaitai at tackle, but at the moment they remain the 153rd and 164th players selected in this past April's draft and not much more. The market forces that saw Isaac Seumalo go off the board in the third round suggest he has a better shot of succeeding journeyman Barbre at left guard than Vaitai does at succeeding HOFer Peters at tackle, though the Eagles would remind you that Peters himself was an undrafted free agent who began life on the practice squad. They'd also tell you that current pet project Dillon Gordon deserves mention as a potential member of the future core.

Sunday will be a night to wonder: What would Prescott look like with the Eagles? The Eagles with Prescott? Wentz with the Cowboys? The Cowboys with Wentz? Put another way: Who would you rather be right now, and who would you rather be five years from now? I don't have an answer, just the question, and a game that could be the first step in the finding out.

@ByDavidMurphy

Blog:philly.com/Philliesblog