Eagles will face Carson Wentz on Sunday. Remember him? Here’s a look back — and what he’s been up to since leaving.
Since being traded from Philly, Wentz has played for five teams. That includes the Chiefs and his current team — the Birds’ Week 7 opponent — the Vikings.
When the Eagles travel to U.S. Bank Stadium to face the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday, they will be going up against a familiar face: Carson Wentz.
The former Eagles first-round pick took over for J.J. McCarthy after McCarthy suffered an ankle injury. Wentz will get the start again Sunday, his second against the Eagles, Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell announced on Friday. The decision came following a week of mystery that included both quarterbacks taking practice reps and speaking to the media.
Ahead of the game, here’s everything you need to know about Wentz’s career in Philly, his fallout with the Eagles, and what he’s been up to since — from season-ending injuries and drama in the locker room to getting traded to watching Jalen Hurts win a Super Bowl from the other sideline.
Wentz’s years in Philly
Wentz played five seasons with the Eagles after he was drafted second overall by the Birds in 2016. The Eagles paid a high price to move up to the No. 2 spot, including five draft picks.
During his tenure with the Birds, the 6-foot-5 quarterback out of North Dakota State found early success.
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As a rookie, Wentz led the Eagles to a 7-9 record while passing for 3,782 yards and 16 touchdowns. During his second year, Wentz picked up right where he left off, leading the team to a 10-2 record before suffering a torn ACL in Week 14 against the Los Angeles Rams.
In his 13 starts, he posted 3,296 passing yards, 33 touchdowns, and seven interceptions — earning his first Pro Bowl nod and as he was ranked No. 3 on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2018.
After Wentz went down, Nick Foles replaced him and led the Eagles to their first Super Bowl win, cementing Foles, not Wentz, as a legend in the city. Meanwhile, Wentz struggled in his return — suffering a stress fracture of his vertebra the following season and a concussion in his postseason debut against the Seattle Seahawks in 2020.
Ahead of Super Bowl LIX, Wentz admitted that he’d like to be able to go back in time and change places with Foles.
“I mean I’m not going to lie, I would love to trade places with Nick Foles and go win that Super Bowl back in the day,” Wentz said. “That would have been a pretty cool ending to that season. But it was still pretty sweet for him nonetheless.”
Benched for Jalen Hurts
The end started to near once the Eagles took Hurts in the second round of the 2020 NFL draft.
In Week 13, with the Eagles sitting at 3-7-1, Wentz was benched for Hurts in the third quarter of their loss to the Green Bay Packers. In 12 games in 2020, Wentz threw for 16 touchdowns, 15 interceptions, and continued to have a fumbling problem. He was also sacked 50 times.
Wentz never played for the Eagles again.
In December 2020, ESPN reported that Wentz had no interest in competing with Hurts for the starting spot. Instead, he was searching for a trade.
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Ahead of a Super Bowl matchup against the Eagles last February, Wentz, then the backup for the Kansas City Chiefs, spoke with The Inquirer’s Jeff McLane about his time in Philly and the team’s decision to draft Hurts.
“I showed up ready to work. That is what it is,” Wentz said of the team drafting Hurts. “Did it surprise me? Absolutely. But it is what it is. I thought Jalen showed up and worked hard. I was impressed with him from the start. I thought he threw the ball well, picked up the offense pretty quick. So I don’t think his success necessarily surprises me.
“Would I have loved to have been there and throughout my career? Without a doubt. Everybody gets drafted and wants to ride out and play and have all the success. But it’s the hand we’ve been dealt, and I’ve tried to make the most of it.”
Drama leading up to the trade
Wentz was eventually traded to the Indianapolis Colts in 2021. But leading up to that, there was plenty of drama surrounding the relationship between Wentz and other players within the organization.
As the quarterback continued to regress following his ACL injury, Wentz struggled with accountability. He was labeled as “selfish,” “uncompromising,” and “egotistical” by sources within a 2019 PhillyVoice report. Wentz responded to the accusations by saying his “personality, to some extent, ain’t going to change.”
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Wentz was also reported to have had issues with the team’s 2017-18 Super Bowl success. In a 2022 Inquirer article, McLane reported that leading up to the championship game, the quarterback voiced his displeasure with the Eagles’ success to a group of other injured players.
Eventually, one of the players confronted him and the two had to be separated. That player turned out to be Eagles running back Darren Sproles.
Through it all, Wentz said he wouldn’t change anything from his time with the Eagles.
“Probably nothing,” he told McLane when asked what he’d like to change. “End of the day, do I wish things went differently? Without a doubt. But I feel like I gave everything I had. Every time I went on that field, I laid it all out there, did the best I could. Did I make mistakes? Yes. Did we win games and I make plays? Yes. Like it was the good, bad, the ugly. But I don’t think there’s anything I’d of changed in that regard.
“There are some moments I learned from over the years, just with just how to be a leader and things that maybe I would have done differently just early on. But like, when it comes to my performance, how I worked, how I trained and prepared, I did everything I could.”
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Wentz faces his former team
Wentz played one full season with the Colts, recording 3,563 passing yards, 27 touchdowns, and seven interceptions while leading Indianapolis to a 9-8 record before he was traded to the Washington Commanders.
In his debut with the Commanders, Wentz threw for 313 yards, four touchdowns, and two interceptions in a win over the Jacksonville Jaguars. In Week 3, he competed against his former team, the Eagles, but didn’t fare as well in a 24-8 home loss for Washington.
Wentz recorded 211 passing yards but was sacked nine times and fumbled twice. Meanwhile, Hurts finished 22-for-35 and threw for 340 yards and three touchdowns in the battle between Hurts and Wentz.
For a more detailed timeline of Wentz’s career leading up to his first game against the Eagles, click here.
What else has Wentz been up to?
Since his trade from the Eagles, Wentz has played for five teams in five years, the last three of which largely as a backup.
Following one-year starting stints with the Colts and Commanders, Wentz was released by Washington and signed with the Rams to be the backup to Matthew Stafford in 2023. The following season, Wentz signed on to back up Patrick Mahomes with the Kansas City Chiefs, who lost to Wentz’s former team in Super Bowl LIX.
“I think I’ve just grown up as a man,” Wentz told McLane when reflecting on his career ahead of the Super Bowl. “We’ve got three kids now. I’ve got a wife. We’ve been married six years. We’ve bounced around. I’ve learned my wife and my family is resilient, and they’re just down for whatever, and we’ve kind of embraced the adventure, so to speak, living — I don’t know how many different places we’ve lived in the 6½ years I’ve been married with my wife now — but I’ve learned just what to value and where to place my value in terms of my faith and my family and all those things.
“I’ve just been more confident in who I am as a person … and my ability to play and all those things, that’s never wavered. Yeah, always been confident in that. But this is where I’m at right now, and I’m enjoying it."
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In 2025, Wentz signed with the Vikings to act as a backup to McCarthy. After McCarthy suffered a high ankle sprain in Week 2, Wentz became the starter in Week 3.
In three starts, the quarterback has completed 69% of his passes (nearly a career high) for 759 yards, five touchdowns, and two interceptions. More important, the Vikings are 2-1 in those games.
To listen to McLane’s full conversation with Wentz from our February episode of unCovering the Birds, click here.
More of The Inquirer’s coverage of Wentz
Throughout Wentz’s five seasons in Philadelphia, The Inquirer has covered quite a lot — from the highs of his first two years to the lows of his final years. Here’s more of The Inquirer’s coverage …
Marcus Hayes once said that Wentz was “poised to be Philadelphia’s greatest sports villain if he leaves the Eagles.” Of course, he did. And that made him “the most hated player in Eagles history,” according to Hayes.
“Philly forgives most misdeeds — Phillies fans largely think Pete Rose should be reinstated, and Andy Reid still gets cheered — but both Wentz and Simmons committed the mortal sin that not even brotherly love can forgive," Hayes wrote. “They each stole money. About $33 million, effectively.”
McLane examined the rise and the fall of the former Eagles quarterback.
“Wentz had once been the centerpiece of [Howie] Roseman’s return to personnel power, his most audacious acquisition,” McLane wrote. “And when the quarterback initially proved the GM right, he loomed large — figuratively and literally — over nearly every decision he made for the next four years.
“But for many in the Eagles organization, Wentz loomed too large, and the consequence was a young man given far too much rein before he had earned hallowed space on team facility walls.”
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Less than a year after giving Wentz a franchise contract, the Eagles drafted a quarterback in the second round. The day the Eagles decided to draft Hurts was the beginning of the end of the Wentz era.
“Owner Jeffrey Lurie can’t fire himself, but he needs to be honest with himself about his role in the Eagles’ recent mistakes in the draft,” McLane wrote. “He needs to frankly assess the job general manager Howie Roseman has done, obviously in relation to the larger picture, but specifically to the Hurts pick.
“There’s little to defend. It has discernibly affected Carson Wentz. How else to explain one of the greatest regressions in NFL history? All it took was 12 games for Wentz to be benched. A strong argument can be made that it should have come sooner.”
Mike Sielski said there’s no single figure to blame for the trade, but like McLane, he places a fair amount on the Eagles brass, whom he believes should have understood the quarterback better.
“The Eagles bear no small amount of blame for this fiasco. … And the only conclusion one can draw now, in the wake of this wreckage, is that he, Howie Roseman, and the rest of the organization looked at Wentz and saw too much of what they wanted to see and not enough of what was actually there,” Sielski wrote. “They failed in their evaluation of him, failed to take a full measure of him as a quarterback and a person, failed to understand what conditions were required for him to thrive and be content.”
Following Wentz trade to the Colts, McLane discussed Roseman’s part in acquiring the quarterback.
“Thursday marked a dark date in franchise history — the trade won’t become official until March 17 — and the GM [Roseman] isn’t blind to the role he played in Wentz’s departure. His “quarterback factory” line at the time of the Jalen Hurts draft pick last April is unlikely to be the only regret he has about that day."
A loss of belief: Things aren’t getting better; they’re getting worse. The theme doesn’t just apply to the Eagles’ Black Friday loss to the Chicago Bears. It fits the narrative of the entire 2025 season. With five games to go, there’s little reason to hope or expect significant change to take place, particularly on the offensive side of the ball — unless ...
The Inquirer’s Jeff McLane and Olivia Reiner take a look at what the Eagles’ seemingly inherent flaws mean for the homestretch of the season, and how they could affect the fate of offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo. Listen here.
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