If the Washington Commanders are to have a good season in 2022, it may come down to their defense rebounding with a 'monster' year, NFL Insider Jason La Canfora says.
"I think the defense is gonna have to be a monster," La Canfora told 106.7 The Fan's BMitch & Finlay on Friday. "Because I just don't know that this is where the Carson Wentz story kind of like has a happy ending. Like, I don't know that if you were gonna list the potential places that have a history of rehabilitating or habilitating quarterbacks, right, incubating quarterbacks, developing quarterbacks, not getting quarterbacks killed... I mean, I don't know that they'd be 32nd on the list, but they sure as hell wouldn't be anywhere in the teens."
"Yeah, they'd be bottom five, for sure," JP Finlay noted.
"And then if Frank Reich couldn't do it, if he didn't have the secret sauce?" La Canfora continued. "Look, do I think it was all Frank Reich [in Indianapolis]? Heck no. I think the owner had a lot to do with it. But Frank Reich wasn't willing to fight for this guy anymore. And it's not just football, it's some of the other stuff, and do dudes really want to go to war with him? Like, there's just a lot of baggage there and I have a hard time believing Washington Commanders circa 2022... I have a hard time thinking they unlock it, they figure it out and Carson Wentz looks like he did four years ago. I'm fading that."
La Canfora was asked what needs to break right for the Commanders offense to perform well.
"With him, if you watch him between the 20s, he's a fairly — at least last year — he was a fairly smooth operator," he said. "The problem is he does things inside his own 20-yard line, and he does things inside the red zone, far too often that just makes you want to gouge your eyes out. And I don't know that that can be coached out of him. I just think that's who he is."
"When the goal line is immediately in front of him, or the goal line is where he lands when he does a seven-step drop, that gives me great pause, especially for a team that isn't overloaded with weapons that are gonna make him better," he continued. "And look, the Colts had a dominant run game. The Colts had a very robust offensive line. The Colts played really good defense for the most part. And Carson Wentz had to sort of manage games and don't bleep it up. And then when it really, really mattered, he still bleeped it up."
"So, do I think the Commanders can provide some of those elements? I do," he said. "But I kinda gotta see it. I mean, there's the pieces there that you could sell me on: that's gonna be a really good defense. But I bought that. I bought it last year, I bought it two years ago. I gotta see it.
"I gotta see the names on the back of the jerseys and where they went to college, and what they did in the SEC or the Big Ten, I gotta see it manifest itself on Sundays together as a unit before I'm gonna say that's the kind of defense that can carry a quarterback like Carson Wentz, if he truly is a reclamation project at the end, who's in just-don't-bleep-it-up mode."
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