What’s really happening with Carson Wentz, Nelson Agholor, and the Eagles offense?

The Philadelphia Eagles have gotten off to a 1-2 start, with a boatload of injuries and an offense that is raising many questions, but few answers. Carson Wentz is at the center of those questions, which generally boil down to whether the offensive issues are on his throwing ability or on his receivers. In particular, a lot of criticism has been thrown Nelson Agholor’s way — in a very public manner.

The answer is pretty simple: it’s both. In reviewing every incomplete pass Wentz has thrown this season, some clear patterns emerge regarding his control of the football. Those patterns are compounded by the drops, occasionally shaky offensive line play, and injuries.

It’s worth noting that Wentz has made plenty of amazing throws this season, and this breakdown may seem overly negative — but that’s by design. I’m looking only at the incompletions from his three games so far against the Falcons, Lions, and Washington.

The Eagles are ranked 12th in the NFL in passing yardage and fifth in pass attempts. Although Wentz’s completion percentage of 61.0 isn’t terrible, it’s in the bottom half of the league among starters. Wentz officially has 46 incompletions, but that factors in a couple plays with penalties, so I’ve settled on 44 incompletions through three games to work with for this post.

Nelson Agholor and Mack Hollins each have two drops, while DeSean Jackson, J.J. Arcega-Whiteside, Darren Sproles, Jordan Howard, Dallas Goedert and Zach Ertz have one each. Seven of those drops came in Week 3 against the Lions.

On the rest of the incompletions, I counted 15 different throws by Wentz that were overthrown, underthrown, thrown too far away, or thrown too far behind. I also counted six bad throws that went in and out of the hands of defenders, throws that could easily have been interceptions. Four of his incompletions were batted down at the line, which is on Wentz.

In other words, I have 24 of 44 incompletions being the fault of errant throws from Wentz, with the rest — after drops — being attributed to good coverage or needing to throw the ball away. His control is very inconsistent, at least through three games. His supporting talent is likewise inconsistent.

Agholor is getting quite a bit of blame, but at least this season, he’s more of a scapegoat. Out of nine incompletions from Wentz to Agholor, I have the receiver being at fault on three of them. One of them seemed like a low-effort play at a catchable ball, while the other two were drops (one of which was a potential game-winner and a brilliant throw).

Wentz either made poor decisions or poor throws on five of the nine, with the ninth simply being good coverage and a contested ball.

This is the kind of throw I saw a lot. More than anything, Wentz in general is putting the ball too high. I know he has players that are great at going up and getting the ball, but not only is he throwing uncatchable passes like the one above, he’s also had some of his top targets take some huge hits they didn’t need to take because they were going up in the air.

The play above is just an example of a slight overthrow. But they get bigger.

Now it might look like there was contact because it’s happening so fast and Agholor is calling for a flag, but there was no interference. That’s just Wentz severely overthrowing the ball when Agholor had the outside. It was the right KIND of throw, but it got away from him. It’s the kind of throw that you’d call an “errant pass,” but “errant” can imply that it’s not the norm, but I’ve found that it is, at least through three games.

Here’s one that wasn’t an overthrow, but another that went too high and for no reason. Agholor was actually making a great play on the ball when the Falcons hit him hard and sent him to the ground. Yes, the pass has to go over the head of the linebacker you briefly see before it gets to Agholor, but it was still higher than Wentz intended and certainly isn’t on Agholor.

That said, Agholor has made mistakes, including a costly fumble in Week 3. He’s also drawn criticisms for not putting in extra effort, and I think that’s on display here. This isn’t a perfectly thrown ball, but Wentz at least put it out of reach of the defenders, and it looks like Agholor can make this catch if he put in more effort. You don’t need to lay out for every pass in the NFL, but why are two Washington players diving for it while Agholor is slowing down and giving up on it?

This is the big one. It’s an egregious drop by Agholor, one that could have been the game-winning touchdown. More than that, it’s a fantastic throw by Wentz because it lines up perfectly with Agholor’s stride. But he dropped it and it’s easy to point to him as the reason the Eagles lost. It’s worth noting he did make a big fourth-down catch later to extend the drive, but that doesn’t make the drop any better.

The Eagles should get some players back from injuries soon, including receivers DeSean Jackson and Alshon Jeffery, and that will help the team improve.

However, Eagles fans have a good reason to be frustrated. The Eagles aren’t far removed from playing in the Super Bowl and they were expected to be contenders again this year. They have a ton of talent and Wentz is a much better player than his incompletions and issues I’ve covered in this article would suggest.

While he’s their franchise quarterback, he isn’t beyond reproach. Something is going on with his control of the football that needs to be addressed. Wentz needs to make sure he’s not putting those players at risk with high throws into coverage so they don’t go right back on the injured list.

But there’s still time to get these issues worked out, so there is no need to panic — not yet anyway.