Carson Wentz hasn't gotten any worse. He's just always been mediocre.

With the Eagles playing on Monday Night Football this past week, the nation was once again forced back into discussing what’s happened to Carson Wentz since his 2017 season when he was widely seen as an MVP candidate.

Since that time, Wentz has been one of the worst starters in the NFL, ranking 27th in adjusted yards per attempt. Mitch Trubisky, Andy Dalton and Sam Darnold are the only quarterbacks who have attempted at least 1,000 passes over that time below him on the list.

There are a few popular theories for why Wentz has regressed since his breakout sophomore campaign: The knee injury he suffered at the end of 2017, his declining supporting cast, bad coaching and poor mechanics have all been offered up as explanations for his poor play.

But what if we’re overlooking the most obvious explanation for his apparent regression? What if there was no regression? What if he just wasn’t very good to begin with?

I get why that’s hard to believe with the numbers Wentz put up in 2017, when he threw 33 touchdowns against only seven interceptions while producing a QBR of 77.2. He also finished second in EPA behind NFL MVP Tom Brady. Throw in all those highlight-reel plays we saw during that 2017 season, and it’s easy to see why fans in Philly were so excited for what was surely going to be a bright future.

But when you look at how Wentz compiled those numbers, it’s easier to see why he’s been unable to match the heights of his 2017 season.

During that season, Wentz was unfathomably good in the red zone and on third down. Those are two areas where you want your quarterback to excel; but, due to sample size issues, a player’s production in those two statistical categories in a given season tells us very little about how he’ll perform in the future. Those numbers are subject to a lot of season-to-season variances, as a result. It’s much more useful to look at how he performed outside of the red zone and on early downs, where we have more plays and, therefore, a more substantial sample size.

Well, when you take out third and fourth downs, Wentz drops from second in EPA/play all the way down to 23rd! Before third down, he was a bottom-10 starter, and his early-down production in 2017 is awfully similar to his career baseline:

via Sports Info Solutions

How about the red zone? In 2017, Wentz produced a red-zone success rate of 61.7%, which led the league by a comfortable margin. Outside of the red zone, though, Wentz dropped down to 18th in success rate. That was actually the lowest mark of his career before the 2020 season:

via Sports Info Solutions

All signs point to 2017 being an aberration for a player who’s been a middling-to-bad quarterback for about 80% of his career. I know he looks even worse in 2020, but that’s what happens to a quarterback with a smaller margin for error. There isn’t really a big difference between how he’s playing now and how he was playing then. Everything else around him has deteriorated, which just magnifies his deficiencies.

For instance, in 2017, Wentz produced an adjusted completion percentage — which takes into account things like receiver drops, spikes to stop the clock, throw aways and passes disrupted by contact from a defender — of 69.6%, per PFF. That was the worst of his career! During this rock-bottom season in 2020, that number is at 70.9%. His turnover-worthy play percentage has peaked in 2020 at 4.65%, but that’s not much of an increase over his career rate, which was sitting at 3.7% coming into the year.

This 2020 season is basically the inverse of his 2017 season. His true talent level is probably somewhere in the middle, where you’ll find a mediocre starting quarterback. So maybe we’re asking the wrong question. Instead of asking why Wentz has regressed, we should be asking why he’s failed to progress.