One subtle adjustment the Commies can make to help Carson Wentz

Wentz bombed in Indy, but there are slight tweaks Washington can make to get *something* out of its newly acquired quarterback

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The Washington Commies have been (rightly) admonished for giving up anything of value to ride the Carson Wentz Experience.

We know who Wentz is at this point: Sloppy with the ball; consistently inaccurate; capable of one-off moments of magic; liable to bring the whole enterprise crashing down through a cocktail or ill-advised decisions and off-the-field leadership that leaves those around questioning whether they really want to do this football thing after all.

To call Wentz’s excursion to Indianapolis an unmitigated disaster would be unfair to the concept of mitigation. Because there were some factors at play.

You know the timeline by now: Wentz joined the Colts after Frank Reich vouched for him – something the coach then took back over an apology lunch with owner Jim Irsay, according to The Athletic. The Colts were good, Wentz’s mistakes were not being punished for the bulk of the season, they had two games to secure a spot in the playoffs, and then the Wentzening came. All that turnover luck that had helped guide Indy throughout the season vanished. Wentz was a mess. He barfed up turnovers. The team splintered. Everyone, from owner to GM to coach to teammates, wanted the quarterback out of the building. They dealt him to the Commanders for a swap of second-round picks, a third-rounder, and another third-rounder that could become a second-rounder based on the percentage of snaps Wentz plays next season.

In reflecting back on that final Reich-Wentz stretch, though, and in trying to look at how Scott Turner might integrate the quarterback into his system, something leaps out: The Colts did not make life easy for Wentz.

Reich is one of those much-mythologized quarterback whisperers who makes life easier on his chucker. When you hear ‘Reich’, the phrases ‘RPO’, ‘creative’, and ‘quarterback friendly’, all slip neatly in behind.

And it’s true! Reich’s system features lots of moving parts, plenty of easily defined reads, all the man-beaters you could ask for, and a steady dose of fairly rudimentary RPOs.

But Reich didn’t make life easier for this particular quarterback at the end of their run together with the Colts. Scan through the final days of the Wentz-Reich dynamic and something stark jumps out: there are a whole bunch of isolation routes and mirrored concepts. Concepts like this, from Reich’s install in Philly:

A mirrored concept is as it sounds: the offense splits the field in half and runs the same concept to either side of the field. For the sake of ease, let’s use a ‘corners’ example: