2023 NFL offseason: Ranking eight quarterbacks by value

As the league calendar turns the page, NFL teams are gearing up for their next shot at contending for a title. The past few NFL offseasons have been defined by teams making splashes for big-name veteran quarterbacks, and 2023 is shaping up to be no different. While some players have already inked their deals, it helps to understand the quarterback market in its entirety.

Below, Football Outsiders‘ Cale Clinton ranks the eight big-name quarterbacks who are available in the 2023 NFL offseason, weighing the risks and rewards for each available signal-caller. Each quarterback is ranked separately on their short-term and long-term value. Those scores are averaged and ranked in ascending order to determine the market’s best options.

We refer to Football Outsiders’ DVOA (defense-adjusted value over average) metric, which takes every play during the season and compares it to a baseline adjusted for situation and opponent. This is different from DYAR (defense-adjusted yards above replacement), which gives a quarterback’s performance compared to replacement level, translated into yardage. DVOA highlights value per play, while DYAR highlights total value. You can read complete explanations at these links for DYAR and DVOA.

1. Lamar JacksonBaltimore Ravens (1.5)

Short-term value ranking: 2
Long-term value ranking: 1

 

Why he is worth signing: Players like Jackson never become available.

Jackson is an elite player with an already-impressive résumé. Since taking over as starter in 2019, he has finished every season in the top 10 among quarterbacks in rushing DYAR. Jackson ranks sixth in total EPA per play over that stretch, according to RBSDM.com. During his unanimous MVP season in 2019, Jackson became the first quarterback ever to throw 30 touchdown passes and rush for 1,000 yards in the same season. Jackson is the first player with 5,000 passing yards and 2,500 rushing yards through their first three seasons, and he is one of six players with 100-plus passing touchdowns and 20-plus rushing touchdowns through five seasons.

Accolades like this make Jackson’s non-exclusive franchise tag near unprecedented. When former MVP quarterbacks leave their teams, they are almost exclusively older quarterbacks looking for the next act in their career. Jackson is 26 years old. A young quarterback of his talent has not hit the open market since Drew Brees left San Diego at 27. Jackson’s desire for a fully guaranteed contract provides additional context to how he became available. It does not, however, change the fact that Jackson being available at all is unprecedented, nor does it excuse Baltimore’s decision to let a player of Jackson’s talent possibly walk.

If anything, Jackson might have been underutilized during his time in Baltimore. In Jackson’s four years as a starter, the Ravens finished 32nd, 32nd, 22nd and 30th in percentage of pass plays run. While Jackson’s rushing ability can really put stress on a defense, his arm talent is seldom used to its fullest extent. His 59.0 QBR ranked ninth among quarterbacks this season, but Jackson attempted just 326 passes, his fewest as a full-time starter.

Baltimore has also struggled to surround Jackson with receiving talent despite its efforts through the draft. In the past decade, the Ravens have had one wide receiver finish top 30 in DVOA — Torrey Smith in 2014. Since Jackson was drafted in 2018, no Baltimore receiver has finished higher than 35th (Marquise Brown, 2019). Having a quarterback who can throw 60-plus yards downfield means little when that quarterback’s best deep option is 36-year-old DeSean Jackson.

Why he is a risky signing: Can he stay healthy?

This is not an overarching statement about mobile quarterbacks and the myth that they are injury prone. Both Sarah Ellison at Film Study Baltimore and John Verros of Sports Info Solutions have found no correlation between running quarterbacks and injury frequency. Ellison’s study even found that quarterbacks who ran most often between 2010 and 2019 were injured less than the NFL quarterback average.

No, these injury questions are specifically about Jackson, who has never played a full season as a starter. Jackson played 24 games in the past two seasons, most recently missing the final six games of Baltimore’s 2022 season because of a PCL sprain. There is understandable hesitation handing a massive contract — especially a fully guaranteed one — to a quarterback who has missed at least one game in each of his four seasons as starter.


2. Derek CarrNew Orleans Saints (3)

Short-term value ranking: 3
Long-term value ranking: 3

Why he is worth signing: A quietly solid quarterback.

Carr is certainly a tier beneath Jackson, as is nearly every quarterback on this list. Carr is a touch underrated in the league’s larger quarterback discourse, though. Prior to 2022, he posted three straight top-10 seasons by DYAR, and was an 11th-place finish away from doing the same in DVOA.

Carr was one of the league’s best deep passers over that stretch as well. For most of his career, Carr has been a solid-if-infrequent deep passer, but between 2020 and 2021, Carr finished 114-for-230 for 3,324 yards, 21 touchdowns and 11 interceptions on passes 16 or more yards downfield. It was enough to help Nelson Agholor earn a payday from the New England Patriots and Zay Jones a deal with the Jacksonville Jaguars in back-to-back offseasons.

For the most part, Carr is the kind of quarterback who will never burn his team with mistakes. He has a career interception rate at 2.0%. He has improved under pressure over the course of his career, finishing 2022 with the sixth-best sack rate under pressure, per Sports Info Solutions. A quarterback like Carr, in most cases, is not going to change the course of a franchise. A 32-year-old mistake-averse quarterback lacking any elite traits is not going to take a no-name roster to a Super Bowl.

What Carr can do, however, is slide seamlessly into an already-talented roster and provide solid B-level quarterback play. That’s what makes New Orleans such a good fit for Carr. The Saints have talent in-house outside of quarterback, but they have struggled to stick the landing post-Brees. Only one Saints quarterback over the past two years has made enough throws to qualify for Football Outsiders’ quarterback rankings despite starting five players at quarterback over that span. One thing New Orleans also has that Carr has never had: a defense. Since drafting Carr, the Raiders have never had a defense finish higher than 16th in DVOA rankings; four of the past six years have featured bottom-three defenses.

Why he is a risky signing: How real was Carr’s 2022 drop-off?

If Carr was ever going to make a leap and put himself squarely in that next tier of quarterback talent, it would have been in 2022. All the pieces were there. Carr survived the throes of the Jon Gruden era to get offensive mind and multitime Super Bowl champion Josh McDaniels to work alongside you. The new general manager’s first move is to pair Carr with college teammate and wide receiver phenom Davante Adams. A receiving corps of Adams, Hunter Renfrow and Darren Waller, coupled with what would eventually be Josh Jacobs‘ career year, should have lined up to deliver the Raiders’ big offensive boom.

Instead, Carr regressed hard. In fact, despite his string of top-10 performances, Carr’s DYAR and DVOA have both fallen each of the last three seasons, and his net yards per pass attempt have fallen the last two. The drop from 2021 to 2022 was the most significant drop over that time period, with the fewest yards per game since 2017 and the lowest completion percentage since his rookie season. Some of it could be chalked up to injuries to Waller and Renfrow, but the consistent drop in performance is undeniable.

Perhaps Carr could benefit from the change of scenery. One bad season after three seasons does not spell the end for a quarterback. However, New Orleans needs realistic expectations for Carr’s contributions in 2023 and beyond. Entering his age 32 season, the NFL has probably already seen Carr’s best football. The floor is still very high for Carr, and the transition to New Orleans could be the exact fix to bring back some fringe top-10 production. Expectations just need to be tempered.


3. Daniel JonesNew York Giants (4)

Short-term value ranking: 6
Long-term value ranking: 2

Why he is worth signing: A toolsy quarterback finally flashed.

The Giants have absolutely blundered Jones’ development. Team owner John Mara admitted as much in his 2022 end-of-season news conference: “We’ve done everything possible to screw this kid up since he’s been here.” Jones had a promising rookie season, but the next two years saw Joe Judge, Jason Garrett and Freddie Kitchens struggle to generate any meaningful progression.

Jones then saw more development in a single year under Brian Daboll than in his first three years with the Giants combined. Daboll didn’t elicit the same leap in Jones that he got out of Josh Allen in his third season, but he certainly helped right the ship. Jones posted a career-high 396 passing DYAR and finished with a positive passing DVOA for the first time in his career. His 67.2% completion percentage was nearly three percentage points higher than his previous career high, while his 60.8 QBR was more than 19 points higher than his 2021 performance.

Jones was always touted as a mobile quarterback, but this was the first season when Jones truly ran efficiently. Jones finished with a 217 rushing DYAR, third best in the league behind Allen and Jackson. His 23.5% rushing DVOA was eighth best among quarterbacks, the first top-10 finish of Jones’ career.

Why he is a risky signing: What is Jones’ ceiling?

For the first time in his career, Jones showed flashes of the first-round quarterback he was drafted to be. What made it even more impressive was the fact that he did this with a skeletal receiving corps marred by injuries, playing behind an offensive line that finished 24th in adjusted sack rate. That kind of performance can get the imagination running. While the Giants have a ton of familiarity with what Jones’ floor looks like, a season like this can put a lot of speculation on his potential ceiling. It’s most of the reason Jones ranks so high in long-term value. By virtue of his age, Jones gets a lot of credit based on what he could become, not what he has put out thus far.

The Giants’ offense was partly the reason Daboll won AP Coach of the Year. New York quietly finished 10th in offensive passing DVOA. (This includes scrambles, where Jones was very good.) Even if the Giants’ receivers weren’t household names, they certainly rose to the occasion. The Giants joined Cincinnati, Miami and Washington as the only teams with two wide receivers ranked top 20 in receiving DVOA. From a passing perspective, Jones was not asked to do all that much. He made 54 throws of at least 16 yards in 2022; his 11% deep pass rate was second lowest behind 37-year-old Matt Ryan. On those throws, Jones ranked 26th in DYAR and 23rd in DVOA among 34 qualified quarterbacks. For the most part, Jones was asked to make some basic pre-snap reads and work with a lot of mesh concepts that got receivers into open space.

While having one season of sample is proof Jones can be competent in the NFL, that sample isn’t enough to justify the contract the Giants just gave Jones. OverTheCap’s Nick Korte found that Jones is the first quarterback to average a negative DYAR before signing a deal in excess of $40 million APY. For comparison, Jones averaged minus-92 DYAR before signing his contract; Allen is the next lowest with an average DYAR of 302. Jones’ standard progression isn’t totally unprecedented. According to Football Outsiders’ Aaron Schatz, Jones is one of three quarterbacks to go from minus-200 DYAR in Year 2, to between minus-200 and 200 DYAR in Year 3, then 200-plus DYAR in Year 4. He joins Randall Cunningham and Trent Dilfer.


T4. Aaron RodgersGreen Bay Packers (4.5)

Short-term value ranking: 1
Long-term value ranking: 8

Why he is worth acquiring: Rodgers is one year removed from back-to-back MVPs.

Rodgers has had quite the late-career resurgence in Green Bay. Prior to the 2022 season, Rodgers strung together four straight top-10 DYAR seasons. Under head coach Matt LaFleur, Rodgers won back-to-back MVPs in 2020 and 2021, leading the league in passing DVOA both seasons and putting up some of the best TD-to-INT ratios of his career. After a sticky patch in Rodgers’ career midway through the 2010s, he added a level of efficiency to his game that made his already-impressive skill set that much more dangerous.

While 2022 saw a big drop-off in efficiency, it overstates the decline in Rodgers’ physical capabilities. Rodgers is still able to make some incredible throws or escape pressure with his legs. Those moments just become much more selective at 38 than they were a few years ago. Losing familiar personnel certainly hurts, too. Rodgers lost arguably the league’s best receiver in Adams, as well as an additional deep threat in Marquez Valdes-Scantling. Those losses was exacerbated by his difficulty working with rookies. It took much longer for Green Bay to get into a rhythm because of the personnel shuffle. The Packers dropped five straight games in Weeks 5 through 9 but strung together a back-half good enough to put Green Bay into a Week 18 win-and-in. From Weeks 10 to 18, the Packers boasted the sixth-best offense and eighth-best passing offense in the league.

Why he is a risky acquisition: How much is left in the tank?

Rodgers is seven years older than the next-oldest quarterback on this list, meaning there is no way to justify putting him anywhere but last in long-term rankings. However, Rodgers’ age alone is not reason enough to write off his late-career wanderlust. There is some historic precedent to quarterbacks 38 or older moving on and finding renewed success with other teams. In fact, those successful second tours are often preceded by late-career drop-offs like Rodgers’ 2022 season.

Tom Brady’s final season in New England broke a decadelong streak of top-10 DYAR finishes (and if you rule out his ACL-tearing 2008 season, you could tack on an extra six seasons to that streak). His 550 DYAR resulted in the lowest rank of his career (16th) and second-lowest finish by DYAR as a starter. He then posted three straight top-three DYAR seasons as a member of the Buccaneers and won his seventh Super Bowl. Philip Rivers saw a late-career surge with two top-three DYAR seasons in 2017 and 2018 before falling to 14th in his last season with the Chargers. Rivers left for the Indianapolis Colts at age 39, and while he did not reach the highs of 2017 and 2018, he outperformed both his DYAR and DVOA from his last season in Los Angeles.

Going further back, the next best example is the quarterback whose departure gave Rodgers his start. Brett Favre left Green Bay on a high note, posting his best DYAR since 1995 and best DVOA since 2004. He left the Packers for the Jets, where he came crashing back down to earth, posting the lowest DYAR and DVOA marks of his career to that point. However, just one year later, Favre posted a career-high 1646 DYAR and 34.5% DVOA with the Minnesota Vikings. If you look back further than Favre, Warren Moon kicked off a journeyman career at 38, where he produced three top-10 DYAR seasons in four years before a hard falloff.

Still, Rodgers has floated the idea of retirement prior to this year. Any team looking to acquire him is really guaranteed only the 2023 season.


T4. Geno SmithSeattle Seahawks (4.5)

Short-term value ranking: 5
Long-term value ranking: 4

Why he is worth signing: 2022 Comeback Player of the Year.

Smith was named season-long starter for the first time since 2014. He went on put up a career season, finishing sixth in QBR, ninth in DYAR, 12th in DVOA and 14th in EPA/Play, per RBSDM.com. His 4.4 CPOE (Completion Percentage Over Expectation) was best among quarterbacks who started at least half the season, according to Next Gen Stats.

That performance is great as a standalone season, but it also holds up well for Smith going forward. According to research from NFELO, CPOE is one of the most stable advanced metrics year over year. Smith’s successes in QBR and EPA tell us less about Smith’s future, but they do give us more context about the present. Both metrics correlate highly to margin of victory, highlighting Smith’s impact on the Seahawks’ offensive success and eventual playoff berth.

While Smith performed well in a vacuum, the real fun comes by seeing his development between his last starting season and now. His league-leading 69.8% completion percentage is a full 10.1 percentage points ahead of his 2014 season. Smith posted a career-high 30 touchdown passes while keeping turnovers low, his 11 interceptions resulting in an 11th-best 1.9% interception rate. Smith also drastically improved as a deep passer. In his first two years, Smith posted DVOAs of 34.0% (2013) and 0.8% (2014) on passes 16 or more yards downfield. In 2022, his 93.6% DVOA on deep passes was good for fifth best among qualified quarterbacks.

Why he is a risky signing: Can Smith do it again?

There has to be some reasonable skepticism around whether Smith can repeat his breakout campaign, even with the above data helping his case.

Among players drafted since 1981, Smith was just the seventh quarterback to post his first top-10 passing DYAR finish in his 10th season or later, joining Randall Cunningham, Doug Flutie, Rich Gannon, Trent Green, Jeff Hostetler and Alex Smith. Of those six, three quarterbacks — Flutie, Gannon and Green — went on to have additional top-10 seasons. Flutie feels like an exception here, leaving after his fourth year in the league for eight seasons in the Canadian Football League only to come back to a starting role with the Bills. Green also had a weird trajectory, not seeing his first NFL playing time until 27.

Gannon, however, has a somewhat similar career trajectory to that of Smith. He began as a backup on the Vikings and struggled when he eventually started for three seasons. Gannon bounced around as a backup for Washington and Kansas City before landing with the Oakland Raiders at age 34. He exploded from there, making four straight Pro Bowls and earning two first-team All-Pro nods in his six years there.

If you change the baseline to eight years instead of 10, you add some more modern examples of late-career surges, namely Jimmy Garoppolo and Ryan Tannehill. Both players thrived in second locations, sustaining top-10 play for multiple seasons. So there is some precedent to Smith turning a one-year anomaly into sustained late-career success.

Football Outsiders’ Aaron Schatz noted a downward trend for Smith as 2022 went on. Through the first five weeks, Smith had a 33.9% passing DVOA with 7.58 net yards per play. In Weeks 6 through 13, those fell to 9.6% DVOA and 6.66 net yards per play. Smith closed the final five weeks of the season with a minus-17.3% passing DVOA and 5.14 net yards per play. The decline in play should give the Seahawks a bit of pause about the long-term sustainability of Geno’s play. But that midseason level of play is still worth keeping in-house, especially given the reasonable contract Seattle and Smith eventually agreed upon.


6. Jimmy Garoppolo, free agent (5)

Short-term value ranking: 4
Long-term value ranking: 6

Why he is worth signing: Can’t deny Garoppolo’s results.

When Garoppolo was on the field for the San Francisco 49ers, he statistically performed as one of the best quarterbacks in football. Garoppolo qualified for Football Outsiders’ quarterback rankings three times during his six-year 49ers tenure. In those three seasons, his DYAR never ranked below 12th best, while his DVOA never fell below 11th. Garoppolo has three top-five finishes in yards per pass attempt and three top-six finishes in completion percentage. Since 2018, Garoppolo is second among active players in EPA per play, trailing only Patrick Mahomes, according to RBSDM.com.

Garoppolo does exactly what you need a quarterback to do, for better or worse. He throws a great ball. He is a highly accurate quarterback. There are no bells or whistles to Garoppolo’s game. It’s why, when Garoppolo was healthy into the postseason, the 49ers made a Super Bowl and an NFC Championship Game. That is also why Garoppolo never helped San Francisco hoist a Lombardi trophy. He brings none of the wrinkles of X factor attributes that make players like Mahomes, Jalen Hurts and Joe Burrow so highly coveted. The 49ers tried to move on from Garoppolo in 2021, eventually agreeing to an incentive-laden deal that would have him sit behind a more dynamic quarterback in Trey Lance. Two weeks in, Lance went down, Garoppolo slid in seamlessly, and he went on to lead the league in passing DVOA before going down himself. Aside from the Lance injury, that kind of performance epitomizes Garoppolo’s tenure in San Francisco.

Why he is a risky signing: What does his production look like outside San Francisco?

While Garoppolo has posted exceptional numbers as a quarterback, he has also had the luxury of throwing to one of the NFL’s best tight ends in George Kittle and one of the league’s most dynamic receivers in Deebo Samuel. This year, San Francisco added the league’s best dual-threat running back, Christian McCaffrey, to that mix. Garoppolo also plays behind the league’s highest-paid tackle in Trent Williams. Garoppolo has been great, but he has boasted arguably one of the best supporting casts of any quarterback in football.

The impact of Kyle Shanahan cannot be understated, either. Shanahan has led three top-10 offenses by offensive DVOA since becoming 49ers head coach in 2017, with additional top-10 finishes as a coordinator in Atlanta, Washington and Houston. Shanahan has generated offensive production at every stop, in part because the Shanahan offense takes a lot of pressure off quarterbacks. Shanahan’s offense gets players into space, not often demanding too much downfield while using every inch of horizontal space. Throws are easier in the Shanahan system, and those easy throws are made easier with the talent in San Francisco.

To chart CPOE, NFL Next Gen Stats also measures Expected Completion Percentage (xCOMP%), using Completion Probability to determine the anticipated accuracy of a quarterback. That could be understood as the baseline opportunity generated by a player’s offensive scheme. Since 2019, Garoppolo has finished top five in xCOMP% each of the past four years and led the league in xCOMP% twice. It’s part of the reason, when Garoppolo went down in 2022, Brock Purdy made a near-seamless transition into the 49ers’ offense, posting a 21.6% DVOA and outperforming Garoppolo by QBR. He finished with a 69.0% xCOMP%, behind only Garoppolo’s 69.3% for highest in football.

In truth, the question of whether Garoppolo’s success can be sustained elsewhere doesn’t matter if he can’t stay on the field. Since joining the 49ers, Garoppolo has played one full season. The two seasons Garoppolo has played more than 15 games have ended in a Super Bowl berth and an NFC Championship Game appearance, but the fact that Garoppolo has had seasons consistently cut short by injury is a major red flag. Even as a member of the New England Patriots, Garoppolo’s first starting opportunity (filling in for the four games of Brady’s Deflategate suspension) was cut short by dislocating his non-throwing shoulder two games in.


7. Jacoby Brissett, free agent (6)

Short-term value ranking: 7
Long-term value ranking: 5

Why he is worth signing: Brissett outplayed his role as a fill-in QB.

Brissett was signed by the Cleveland Browns two days after they acquired Deshaun Watson. Watson’s suspension after allegations of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women was inevitable, and the Browns needed a stopgap to hold the team for 11 games. If we go purely off performance, the Browns should have never switched away from Brissett. He outperformed Watson in just about every metric. Brissett was the more accurate passer, completing 64.0% to Watson’s 58.2%. He averaged 7.1 yards per pass attempt to Watson’s 6.5. He took 24 sacks in 11 games to Watson’s 20 in six. Brissett was even a better rushing quarterback than Watson, slightly edging him in yards per rush attempt (5.0 to 4.9).

Brissett wasn’t just good compared to Watson, he excelled relative to the league. Brissett finished seventh in passing DVOA, finishing ahead of former teammate Tom Brady. His 59.7 QBR beat Lamar Jackson by three-tenths of a point. Brissett’s career-high 600 DYAR was sandwiched between Justin Herbert (667) and Dak Prescott (526). In those 11 games, Brissett was one of the league’s best quarterbacks.

Why he is a risky signing: Is he more than a career backup?

Brissett’s whole career has featured situations similar to what he experienced in Cleveland. His rookie year, Brissett was asked to fill in for an injured Jimmy Garoppolo, who was filling in for a suspended Brady. The next season, Brissett was thrust into the starting role to fill in for an injured Andrew Luck, then he did so again a few years later following Luck’s surprise retirement. In Miami two years ago, Brissett was in and out for a banged-up Tua Tagovailoa. Wherever Brissett has been, he has given his team a chance to win games. He finished 2-1 during the “deflategate” stretch, nearly finished .500 with the Colts in 2019 and was 2-3 as a starter with Miami. Brissett’s role for several years was to help weak teams get by. Cleveland was the first destination where Brissett’s team won games because of his ability. It also marked the second time (and second team) he finished above average in both DVOA and DYAR.

Brissett has spent his career to this point as a backup, so he cannot justifiably end up high on this list. Every start he has been given has come as a result of an emergency, injury or just a general deviation from Plan A. Cleveland is almost the lone exception to that. Even though it was going to be a finite starting role, Brissett was brought in in March with the knowledge that he would start Week 1. He ended up a top-10 quarterback in a handful of meaningful performance metrics. Several teams have quarterback vacancies; not all will be filled with big free agents or top-end draft talent. For the teams who cannot find their answer, there is no reason not to take a flier on Brissett.


8. Carson Wentz, free agent (7.5)

Short-term value rank: 8
Long-term value rank: 7

Why he is worth signing: Wentz’s highs are high.

Somewhere, deep down, there is a starting-caliber quarterback inside Wentz. His sophomore season could have ended in potential MVP consideration had he not torn his ACL late in the regular season. Prior to his season in Washington, four of his past five seasons closed with a positive DVOA. In those years, his DYAR rank ranged from eighth to 17th. At his best, Wentz is a capable quarterback. It took him a while to find a rhythm with the Indianapolis Colts, who lost their first three games under Wentz, but Indianapolis ranked 10th in offensive DVOA and 17th in offensive passing DVOA from Week 4 onward. Wentz played textbook, turnover-free football for the Colts, putting up a bunch of two-touchdown, no-interception performances over that tenure in Indianapolis.

His season in Washington was more erratic on both ends of the spectrum. Wentz put up 650 passing yards, seven touchdown passes and three interceptions in his first two games, then mustered three touchdowns and three interceptions across his next four games. A happy medium between these two versions of Wentz is someone who could put a team in a position to win.

Why he is a risky signing: Is he even worth giving another shot?

What does a team gain by bringing Wentz into its quarterback room, at this stage in his career? Three different teams have moved on from Wentz in three straight seasons. The Colts traded for Wentz on March 17, 2021, then sent him to Washington March 9 the following year. Similarly, the Commanders released Wentz within a year of acquiring him, opting for fifth-round rookie Sam Howell and an extra $26 million in cap space over a player who received MVP consideration within the past five seasons. Injuries have deterred Wentz at every turn. Beyond the ACL tear, Wentz dealt with a fractured vertebra in 2018, a nagging high ankle sprain in 2021 and a fractured finger on his throwing hand in 2022. Every new opportunity comes with a hurdle. Every good or great game Wentz plays gets canceled out by a back-breaking loss.

Wentz’s first game with the Commanders was a 313-yard, four-touchdown, two-interception performance in a back-and-forth victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars. His last game was a 143-yard, three-interception dud against the lowly Cleveland Browns that eventually eliminated Washington from the postseason. Wentz had some solid performances with the Colts, then lost a win-and-in Week 18 game against the Jaguars to miss the postseason. It certainly doesn’t help that anonymous sources constantly report about Wentz’s personality and actions off the field alienating teammates.

Nearly every veteran quarterback has an argument for why he is at least worth a training camp slot. Wentz’s argument starts with the 2017 season, and it doesn’t take long before the most compelling argument becomes “actually, his stint with the Colts was a lot better than people remember.” Wentz is too far into his career to have the same upside he had as a No. 2 overall pick and too volatile to be a reliable backup.

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