Carson Wentz is a much easier call than the AFC or NFC championship games

The four best teams in the NFL still are playing, which is great. It’s going to make for two fantastic games with New England at Kansas City in the AFC and the Rams at New Orleans in the NFC.

The Philadelphia Eagles, they’re home now. But the defending champions made what I thought was an easy call for their future with Carson Wentz.

From the outside, a lot of people wanted Nick Foles to be the long-term guy given what he did last season winning the Super Bowl when Wentz was out with a knee injury and this season making another late-season run when Wentz was out with a back injury.

But you have to be very careful even entertaining that question.

When I look at Wentz and everything that goes into playing quarterback, he is hands-down the guy. That’s not to say that Foles can’t have success somewhere and it’s not to say that the Eagles couldn’t try to sign both of them again for one more year.

It’s an interesting situation, but I think Foles is going to move on and a team that needs a quarterback, a team that’s hungry, it’s definitely going to look at adding him.

The question for that team will be, which Nick Foles are they getting? That remains to be seen. I think it’s going to come down to the offensive system and then how good they are around him.

This isn’t a shot on Foles; he’s just not a guy who’s going to do things above the Xs and Os to where he’s going to take your team to another level. He can do it for a small amount of time – he can do it for three or four weeks, like he did last year; he can do it for three or four weeks, like he did this year.

But at some point you have to have a guy who can raise a team’s level of play – look at what Russell Wilson is able to do, or Patrick Mahomes.

Wentz is one of those guys.

They can make a team significantly better just by being out there.

Foles, he gives his guys chances. He will definitely give his wide receivers opportunities, so if it’s a team that has an Alshon Jeffery, a Golden Tate, a Nelson Agholor, a Zach Ertz, if it has those kinds of guys, then Foles is going to give them chances down the field and they’ll probably make a lot of plays. But if that team doesn’t have those kinds of guys, now those chances down the field turn into incompletions or interceptions.

Wentz had his ups and downs this year, but it’s always more difficult when you’re coming off an injury. There is so much that goes into a quarterback’s preparation. It starts in the spring and when guys don’t go through a whole offseason where they can get mentally locked in, get their timing down and have a full grasp of the offense, it will have an impact.

Wentz didn’t have that luxury this year. When he gets a full offseason, he’s going to play tremendous football.

The only question left for the Eagles: Do they want to spend a lot of money to try to keep Foles there for one more year or do they let him go?

They’re in a good situation, it’s just a difficult one.

But if the Eagles have a healthy Carson Wentz next season and can get their run game back to where it was two years ago they can be right back where the Rams and the Saints are now – playing for the NFC championship.

That will be a fascinating game.

Championship matchups

The Saints, they’re at home and they don’t lose at home in the playoffs. It’s a very difficult place to play. But there are two things with the Rams, and they’re both on defense. The Rams showed up and stopped the run last week. If they can go into New Orleans and stop Alvin Kamara and Mark Ingram, that’s how you beat the Saints.

You have to stop the run and you have to have someone that can cover Michael Thomas and take your chances with everyone else, and Aqib Talib didn’t play in the game earlier this year when they gave up a ton of yards.

In the AFC, the Patriots, they’ve done a good job the past two months. They’ve been getting ready for this playoff run and they almost look like the 2004 New England Patriots where it was a heavy run emphasis, play good defense. They’re not afraid to line up in the I-formation and run the football with Sony Michel and people have had a hard time stopping them. It’s, ‘Here we go again,’ almost.

But the game is in Kansas City and it has that ‘X’ factor. Patrick Mahomes can flip all of our stats and all of our thought processes because of the ability that he has to make incredible plays at any time.

David Carr answers your questions

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This story was originally published January 16, 2019 at 4:25 PM with the headline "Carson Wentz is a much easier call than the AFC or NFC championship games."