Jordan Matthews thought folks should have cut Carson Wentz some slack

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When Jordan Matthews sat down to read the now-infamous PhillyVoice story that characterized one of his best friends as “selfish” and “egotistical,” he couldn’t help but think of one thing. 

Maybe everyone should have cut Carson Wentz some slack. 

Matthews, a pending free agent, was on SiriusXM and gave his take on Wentz and the article. While Matthews thought much of it was a stretch, he seemed bothered by some of the anonymous quotes: 

“I also think that some of the quotes that were, I guess, in the article … I don’t think they were very well-thought-out or measured, only because when you’re playing through injury, when you’re coming back off of a season where you don’t get to play in the playoffs and all this stuff, if there’s any slip in character for somebody of Carson’s caliber, I think there should be some grace applied. I think that should be the type of posture everybody should bring to somebody like that because this dude is the face of a franchise. 

“You think of the pressure that’s on his shoulders every single day and to miss out on being that leader and being in that position and come back and for right back into it and play through pain, I think there should always be some grace applied, especially somebody in that position.”

In his interview back in late January, Wentz didn’t dismiss everything in the report and even admitted he can be selfish (see story). He then admitted the last couple years haven’t been easy on him as he went through the ACL injury and then the back injury this past season. 

Wentz even admitted that he probably “wasn’t the greatest teammate at times because I was emotionally kind of all over the place.” 

Sure, that’s an excuse, but it’s a pretty good one. Wentz does have a ton of pressure on him and it couldn’t have been easy to go through what he went through. Does that excuse him from being a good teammate? No, it doesn’t. 

But Matthews seemed to wish that his fellow teammates would have been more understanding of the situation Wentz was in.  

“Just reading it, obviously, it was a stretch,” Matthews said. “Even when you read the article, it feels like a scary story you’d read to your kid. It seemed like such a stretch. And so, I think the second Carson goes out there, they’ll play the Rocky theme music, he’ll start ballin’ and it’ll all be forgotten.”

Well, Matthews is absolutely right about that. If Wentz turns out to be the franchise quarterback the Eagles think he’ll be, this entire story will be forgotten.

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