With each passing week, Carson Wentz has looked more and more comfortable, more and more like the guy who was the NFL’s MVP through 11 weeks last year.
On Thursday night, he looked all the way back.
Wentz fashioned one of the finest games of his career Thursday night, and he did it with the Eagles' season teetering in the balance.
Wentz has been sharp since he returned in Week 3, but this was vintage Wentz. Each game he’s played he’s looked more comfortable in the pocket, more aware of pressure, better able to see the whole field.
This was the Carson Wentz of old, and, man, was it fun to watch.
Wentz was very good his first three games. He was next-level Thursday.
Wentz completed 72 percent of his passes (26 of 36) for 278 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions in the Eagles’ 34-13 win at MetLife Stadium.
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His 122.2 passer rating was fourth-highest of his career.
The Eagles did things they haven’t done this year. They won on the road. They jumped on a team early. They finished a team off.
For the first time this year, it kind of felt like 2017 again.
Wentz has been over 65 percent in all four starts, and he’s got seven touchdowns and no interceptions in his last three.
He’s never had a stretch like this. In fact, no Eagles quarterback has.
Coming off a torn ACL and without a preseason, despite a rotating cast of skill players and uneven pass protection, Wentz has opened the season by becoming the first quarterback in Eagles history to complete 65 percent of his passes and throw for 250 yards in four straight games.
Magical.
Wentz said he wanted to be more accurate this year, and he’s at 68.4 percent for the season, which is franchise-record pace. He hasn’t thrown an interception in a month. He didn’t fumble Thursday.
Any way you measure it, Wentz is actually performing at a higher level now than during his near-MVP season.
“He really did a nice job just executing the offense, going where he needed to go with the football, making some good decisions at the line of scrimmage, and really put a full game together,” Doug Pederson said.
Wentz has a way of bringing order to chaos.
Even with Lane Johnson hobbling around on a sprained ankle at right tackle and eventually leaving the game for the fourth quarter, Jason Peters leaving the game with a biceps injury, a couple different left guards in there, Wentz, for the most part, stayed out of trouble, delivered the football accurately and got the Eagles into the end zone.
Best of all, he used all his weapons. It wasn’t just Zach Ertz catching a ton of balls.
Alshon Jeffery had eight catches for 74 yards, Ertz was 7 for 43, Nelson Agholor 3 for 91, Corey Clement caught three passes, Jordan Matthews had two big first-down catches on third downs, and DeAndre Carter, Dallas Goedert and Wendell Smallwood also had receptions.
“That’s huge,” Wentz said. “I think really that’s kind of what we did a lot last year. You could look in the stat sheet every week and there would be seven, eight, nine guys (with catches).
“That’s just something that coach does a great job of, spreading the ball out, getting those guys in space to make plays and guys were making plays.”
Wentz lowered his career interception ratio to one every 54.7 pass attempts, passing Tom Brady and moving into fourth place in NFL history (behind Tyrod Taylor, Aaron Rodgers and Colin Kaepernick).
He’s now got 57 touchdowns, fourth-most in NFL history after 33 games (behind Dan Marino, Kurt Warner and Matthew Stafford).
And in just four games, he's lifted his career accuracy from 61.5 percent to 62.4 percent.
As good as he was last year, Wentz somehow, despite everything, is better than ever now.
And the best thing about it is, there’s no way to even imagine what his ceiling is.
He's scary good, and he's just getting started.