Does Carson Wentz need an elite No. 1 receiver for the QB to blossom?

The Eagles' hope is that Carson Wentz and Alshon Jeffery will become a storied pairing, a Pro Bowl quarterback and his go-to, Pro Bowl wide receiver. (This would require them to sign Jeffery past this season, something that presumably will become a priority if 2017 proceeds as planned.)

Does a young quarterback need a true, top-shelf No. 1 receiver in order to maximize his potential? Long ago, Andy Reid felt strongly that the answer was no, and Eagles fans spent three years having their hopes dashed in successive NFC championship games.

At the time, Reid was greatly affected by his work in Green Bay with young Brett Favre. Reid thought that early in Favre's tenure, Favre looked too much to all-pro wideout Sterling Sharpe and didn't spread the ball around in their West Coast offense, as God and Bill Walsh intended.

So after Reid became head coach of the Eagles, Donovan McNabb ended up trying to get to the Super Bowl and ending up on the doorstep in the 2001, 2002, and 2003 seasons with Todd Pinkston, James Thrash, and Freddie Mitchell, among others, catching the ball (or not, as the case may have been). Finally, Reid relented and brought in Terrell Owens, a move that got the Eagles to the Super Bowl, anyway, before Owens  spent the next year confirming Reid's worst fears about trying to fit such a player within a team concept.

Reid now coaches the Kansas City Chiefs, who don't quite have an elite quarterback  in Alex Smith but would seem to have an emerging elite wideout in Tyreek Hill. And Reid's ideas on what is important between a quarterback and his wideouts have evolved.

"Having a wide receiver that the quarterback trusts is a good thing," Reid said recently, by text. "If they are friends off the field, that's another dimension that can help your pass game and potential pass game production.

"Trust, trust, trust. Listen to [Tom] Brady's presser after [Julian] Edelman got hurt. The word trust and [emphasis on] hours of work are what stood out. A good WR that a QB can trust is like Linus and his blanket," Reid said.

What Brady said after Edelman went down for the season with a torn ACL was that "we've spent so many hours of time together talking about routes and situations – so much of a quarterback-receiver relationship is about trust. I see things a certain way, and the receivers need to see it the exact same way in order for me to be able to really anticipate where to go with the ball. I just have had that [with Edelman] – this is our ninth year on the same team, working in the same offense. We're so in sync."

So, in Brady's view (and in Reid's current view), a quarterback needs a guy he can be joined at the hip with, more than he needs a guy with transcendent talent. A receiver might not need to be Julio Jones or Odell Beckham Jr. in order to cement such a bond. He does need talent. Edelman might  not be physically imposing, but he's talented enough to have caught 98 passes for 1,106 yards last season. He has been to the Pro Bowl and he's a No. 1 receiver, at least as long as he's with Brady.

"I totally think it matters" for a quarterback to have a go-to guy, Eagles quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo said recently.

"The biggest thing for us is winning against press coverage in the National Football League. You got to have guys that can win against press, whether that be the tight end, whether that be the back, whether that be the receiver — it doesn't matter. Any position, you've got to win vs. press coverage."

It was interesting to hear DeFilippo bring that up, because beating press coverage was one thing the Eagles' poorly regarded receiving corps did not do well last year, when Wentz was a rookie. It is among the things Jeffery was brought in to fix, and among the things Jordan Matthews, despite his tight bond with Wentz, did not do especially well.

Eagles offensive coordinator Frank Reich was an NFL quarterback. Asked about the importance of Jeffery recently, Reich was unequivocal:

"There's a great feeling that you have as a quarterback when you're either in the shotgun or under center and you kind of look out there and you see your guy. And you look across and you see who is covering him," Reich said. "When you have a feeling as a quarterback like, 'He's always open; he can always win,' it gives a quarterback a lot of confidence. You can't [overstate] how important that is. I think that's a primary thing that Alshon brings to the table."

Wentz  said recently that a go-to guy is a good thing to have, but an elite quarterback ought to get the best out of the guys he has; his greatness shouldn't rest on their talents.

"You can be elite no matter who's around you, in my opinion," he said.

"You just look at  guy like Tom Brady, he's done it no matter's who's there, every year. Has he had some elite guys at times? Yeah. Has he done it without elite guys? Yeah. Has he been elite every year? Yeah. I think he just mastered his craft so well. That question makes me think of him, honestly. He's been doing it for so long, no matter who's around him.

"I think it can definitely help [to have a no-doubt No. 1]. It can help when it's third-and-6 and you know you're getting Cover 1. It's like, 'I'm going to find my best guy and go after him.' I don't think it's make or break, but obviously, the better guys around you [are], the better you're going to be," Wentz said. "I think an underrated part of it, though, is the five guys up front. They can make a huge difference. That, and a good running game can change everything."

Wentz more or less paralleled Brady and Reid, saying a great quarterback needs to know who he's working with, in detail.

"He knows their limitations. He knows what they're good at. I think as a good leader, as an elite quarterback, you know your guys …  Obviously, the coaches do their part in getting guys in the right position, but you do your part in seeing where you can take that chance – 'Yeah, I'm not going to take that chance.' It's a learning process every year with your guys. But I think without a doubt, you can be [an elite quarterback without an elite receiving talent]."

If a quarterback needs to form a tight bond with his top guy, as Brady, Reid, and Wentz indicated, it's no wonder Wentz sounded a little frustrated a few weeks back over Jeffery's sitting out the first two preseason games. Wentz built a very close working relationship and friendship with Matthews, who perhaps didn't quite have the physical skills to become "the guy" long-term. Certainly, the Eagles' reluctance to pay Matthews top receiver money figured into the trade that sent him to Buffalo.

Wentz has been asked a lot about his relationship with Jeffery, and he has said positive things, but it's been apparent that they don't really know each other yet in the way Wentz and tight ends Zach Ertz and Trey Burton do, in the way Wentz and Matthews knew each other.

"It's really nice having a guy like Alshon," Wentz said as training camp began. "Not only his catch radius, but he has some of the strongest hands I've ever seen. The thing with Alshon and I, it's all about building that chemistry and building that relationship. I've already seen it in OTAs and mandatory minicamp, and I'm excited. Out in Fargo, as well. You can just see, it's kind of a different animal throwing the ball to him. He covers some ground."

It seems pretty obvious that the quicker the Wentz-Jeffery relationship develops, the quicker Wentz will.