Wentz vs. Hurts - Who Was Better in 2020?

In the 2020 NFL Draft, the Eagles shocked everyone by selecting Jalen Hurts with their 2nd round pick. A selection that was met with criticism and questions after Carson Wentz seemed to carry an Eagles team with a sub-par receiving corps. Fast forward to the 2020 season, and the decision seems to be not-so-questionable with Carson Wentz drastically underperforming his pervious seasons. Jalen Hurts eventually replaced Carson Wentz and remained the starter for the rest of the season (lets ignore the last game). With Doug  Pederson being fired, its clear that the front office doesn't blame either of the QBs primarily for the disastrous season in which the Eagles finished 4-11-1. The Eagles now head into the off-season and draft with a QB controversy alongside trade-rumors revolving around Carson Wentz. Here we take a deep dive into the season performances from both QBs. By the end, we discuss what the Eagles might do going forward.

Making the comparison:

Its a challenge to compare two quarterbacks in this scenario. They both played in somewhat difficult circumstances with the many injuries on the Eagles team plus the questionable play-calling throughout the season. Similarly, Wentz played the majority of the season whereas Hurts played only a few towards the end, and both played different opponents. One way to account for these differences is considering their strength of opponents and performances throughout the season. First, we will consider the Performance Value (PV) of their production throughout the game. Essentially, this represents how much more or less do you perform compared to an average player facing the same opponents. Second, we will consider the strength of the opponents that each quarterback faced. Doing this analysis shows some revealing results about how excellent, average, or horrible a player/team was throughout the season. Lets jump in.

Simplified: For all plots, being to the right on the x-axis means strong performance, left means weak performance. Being higher up on the y-axis means strong opponents, and further down means weak opponents 

Passing Game

First taking a closer look at their performance in the passing game. Starting off with Pass Yards per Game (PY/G) and Pass TDs per game. The plots below show how Wentz and Hurts individual performances compare to each other and all other NFL teams. On the X-axis is the QB's Performance Value (PV), better performances are to the right of the middle line and worse performances are to the left. Opponent Strength is on the Y-axis with harder opponents being above the middle line, and weaker opponents being below the line. The plot on the left shows this comparison for Pass Yards, and the plot on the right shows Pass TDs.

This gives more insight into the Eagle's season as a whole. It shows that the Eagles faced opponents who were mostly better than average at allowing both Pass Yards and Pass TDs. Hurts faced easier defenses than Wentz, and it appears that Hurts performance is higher to the same proportion roughly in both categories. However, both still performed worse than QBs who faced the same difficult pass defenses. We can conclude that Hurts and Wentz are roughly equal based on their 2020 performances in Pass Yards and TDs, with a slight edge to Hurts.

Now lets take a look at interceptions, with the same type of graph: the x-axis shows performance value with throwing interceptions, and the y-axis shows their opponent's average defensive interceptions against all other teams. 

This is quite telling of how much Wentz's turnovers, despite him having many this season, are overly discussed compared to other quarterbacks. One of the points worse than Wentz is the Eagles average score so we will ignore that. Other than that, there are only three points on the plot that are worse than Wentz when it came to interceptions this year. They represent the the Denver Broncos QBs, the Washington Football Team QBs, and Jalen Hurts. 

Hopefully the major difference in Jalen Hurts and Carson Wentz when it came to interceptions is clear here. Wentz faced defenses who intercepted at a rate which is roughly the league average, yet he threw roughly 1.75 times more interceptions than QBs facing the same defenses.

​Jalen Hurts faced some of the easiest defenses with respect to interception rate. And despite having a lower average interceptions per game than Wentz, Hurts' interceptions were against teams who rarely intercept the ball, which translates to a worse performance grate on this graph.

The data shows that this is a concern for both QBs. Ideally, you'd like to be closer to 1.0 for interception PV if you cannot be above it. However, Jalen Hurts having a PV for interceptions that high should be a major concern., equal or more to the concern that is publicly shared regarding Wentz and his turnovers.  

Rushing Offense

I bet you can predict what the analysis will say about this one, with Jalen Hurts and the Eagles having some absurd rushing games when he started at QB. But nevertheless, lets take a look at similar graphs, but this time for Rush Yards (left) and Rush TDs (right), with the axis and plot colors having the same meanings as before:

As expected, this shows that the Eagles rush offense was absolutely off the charts (literally) when gaining rush yards with Jalen Hurts starting at QB. This could be a bit inflated due to the Saints performance, but we cannot discount that performance against an extremely talented 2020 Saints rush defense. The Eagles once again faced difficult opponents who would allow less Rush Yards and Rush TDs than other teams. But when facing those teams, the Eagles performed excellently in both categories with Jalen Hurts in the game. 

When Wentz was starting, the rush attack often felt stagnant. Its important to note that the Eagles still put up rushing yards better than other teams against the same opponents while Wentz was starter. However, this is not the case with Rush TDs. It is important to note that Wentz was starting during the stretch in which the Eagles would not run with Miles Sanders as much as they should. Whether this is because of Wentz or former HC Doug Pederson we will never know, but it important to note as it may play an additional role in the differences represented here.

This category goes to Hurts for obvious reasons, but it is important to note that it is mainly because of the rushing offense being excellent with Hurts, not because they were bad with Wentz. The Eagles rush offense was about average according to this analysis with Wentz in the game. 

What to make of this?

Honestly, it is hard to come to a conclusion here with the QBs. It would have been interesting to see how Wentz performed against some of the defenses that Hurts got to face down the stretch. For 2020 performances, the slight edge goes to Hurts over Wentz according to this analysis. This is because of the similar performances as passers, and because Hurts made the offense more dynamic with his rushing ability. However,  despite the rushing offense was dominant with Hurts in the game, his turnovers should be incredibly worrying (yes, equally or more worrying to Wentz's). If this persists, Eagles may find themselves wanting to draft another QB in the near future.

There are so many other factors for the GM and Owner to consider when moving forward into this offseason: who is drawing more value on the trade market, who does the new Head Coach see could be a star, how do you want to build the offense, etc. One thing that is not up for debate is that we know that Carson Wentz has a MVP ceiling, but he has fallen far from that. For the Eagles moving forward, this may ultimately come down to which do you trust more: Hurts developing more as a passer, or Carson Wentz returning to what he once was under the new Head Coach.