Oh, is it officially a 1st?
Not yet official. But he needs to sit for, like, 5 games to keep their 1st rounder from going to Philly. Time is running out for them to make the switch.
They're still in the playoff hunt at 4-5 now. And Wentz individually is playing well enough for them to be optimistic about his future (and therefore less likely to shame him by quitting on the year and benching him, even though if they're being realistic he's much more likely to QB them somewhere in 2022 if he's armed with a new 1st round addition to the roster).
They'll almost surely whip the Jaguars next week to get themselves back to .500 so they can convince themselves they're competing.
Then they'll lose two in a row to Buffalo and Tampa, but they'll come out of that saying, "Well, sure, but those are elite teams. No shame in losing to them." And if they happen to cut it close in either those losses, they'll be even more encouraged. With only 5 games remaining.
This is the point of no return. 5 games left.
The next one, Houston, seems like a sure win (they won 31-3 over them the first time they played), so it would be tough to call off the dogs then when youve got a cushy win looming. Even if Houston pulls off the upset and wins and demoralizes them to the point that they face reality and decide the remaining 4-game stretch can't be won out, it's too late to reverse course and save the 1st rounder. (Unless they go full-on Math Nerd and start running an insane hurry-up offense designed to do nothing but maximize the number of snaps in the remaining 4 games, just for the sake of inflating the percentage of snaps the new QB has played.)
Basically, we need to hope the Jaguars beat them next week. If they lose to the Jags and then take their L's against Buffalo and Tampa, maybe that 3-game losing streak causes them to pack it in and protect their 1st rounder. If they put in a bad backup QB after that 3-game stretch, they can lose out or come close to losing out (they play NE, Vegas, and Arizona -- they just need Trevor Lawrence to best them in week 18 and they'll need their backup to cost them the Houston game) and end up with a very high pick to build around in the 2022 draft.
My worry is they'll beat the Jags, and then narrowly lose to Buffalo and Tampa (close enough to call it a moral victory). At that point they'll puff themselves up, and they kid themselves that they'll make a push and sneak into the tournament with the 7th seed. But that doesn't happen. Instead, they lose a shocker to Houston. The Pats beat them. The Cardinals beat them. The Raiders beat them. And maybe even the stinkin' Jags beat them with Trevor Lawrence finally putting things together and looking less like crap to close out the year. At 5-12 or 6-11, they finish miles away from the playoff spot they kidded themselves into thinking they'd steal. And the draft pick is crazy-high, helping the Eagles.
By the way, if they bench Wentz at the last possible second at a point where it's gonna come down to the wire and be really close in terms of snap percentages, it's worth remembering their final game is against a division rival who has a vested interest in costing them their 1st rounder since they have to face the Colts twice a year. The Jaguars could make up their minds to eat up the clock in their Week 18 game, dampening the number of total snaps in the game (so the Colts' new starting QB walks away from that game with fewer snaps than he'd normally get in a normal full game), tilting the math in a way that makes it even harder for the Colts to sneak in under the "75% of the snaps" threshold. If our season was effectively over and all we had to do to cost a division rival a 1st round pick was make a concerted effort to chew up the clock and limit the number of snaps in the final game, I'd do that in a heartbeat.