Carson Wentz is publicly taking the high road, though he’s surprised his former employer chose a lower one.
Wentz was traded to the Commanders after a season with the Colts that ended disastrously. On the heels of the deal, Indianapolis owner Jim Irsay called acquiring Wentz in the first place “a mistake” and said the team had to move on quickly without him.
In Wentz’s first public comments since, the quarterback said he was happy with the Colts and suggested he was unaware that someone so important was not happy with him.
“I had awesome relationships with every single person in that building. Can’t say enough good things about the people over there. [The comments] kind of came out of left field, you know?” Wentz said on the “Colin Cowherd Podcast” on Wednesday. “He’s entitled to his own opinion, and he’s entitled to do what he wants with his football team.”
What Irsay did with his football team was deal the once-promising Eagles prospect to Washington, swapping second-round picks and giving the Commanders a third-rounder a year after the Colts gave up more for his services. Irsay’s crew sent the 16th-overall pick in 2021 and a third-rounder to the Eagles for Wentz, hoping he could rediscover the form that made him an MVP candidate in 2017.
The now-29-year-old never reached that level, but he threw for 27 touchdowns and just seven interceptions and had the Colts in position to enter the postseason, needing just a Week 18 win over the terrible Jaguars.
Instead, the Colts were crushed, 26-11.
“No disrespect to Jacksonville, but I mean, they’re the worst team in the league,” Irsay told the Indy Star after trading Wentz. “You play well and hard for the first quarter or so, and they’re looking to go to their locker room and clean it out. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.
“You say, ‘My God, there’s something wrong here.’ It needs to be corrected. I think that we feel like we did.”
The Colts moved on and traded for Matt Ryan, apparently feeling that Year 2 with Wentz could not happen.
“I think the worst thing you can do is have a mistake and try to keep living with it going forward,” Irsay said. “For us, it was something we had to move away from as a franchise. It was very obvious.”
It was less obvious to Wentz, now on his third team in as many years.
“It is what it is. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. I thought last year was a really fun year,” Wentz said. “I thought we did some incredible things, came up short at the end. Obviously I struggled down the stretch there, and timing was poor. But I didn’t expect that. I didn’t expect things to unfold the way they did, and I thought things were in a pretty good place there.”