Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz relies on faith to drown out noise from critics

Injuries forced Carson Wentz to watch another quarterback lead the Philadelphia Eagles to their first Super Bowl title and put him on the sideline for playoff games in each of the next two seasons.

Now the franchise player with the big contract saw his team use a second-round pick on a quarterback who was runner-up for the Heisman Trophy last year.

The Eagles didn't draft Jalen Hurts to compete with Wentz, only to provide insurance. That hasn't stopped some media and fans from creating a quarterback controversy and interpreting the pick as a slight against the No. 2 overall pick in the 2016 draft out of North Dakota State.

Constant scrutiny and intense criticism are part of the job for NFL quarterbacks. In Philadelphia, it's loud and consistent.

But Wentz blocks it out. He doesn't break. He won't allow disappointment, frustration or setbacks to bring him down. Nor does he let success — he finished third in NFL MVP voting in 2017 and signed a contract extension with $108 million guaranteed last summer — inflate his ego.

The reason is his strong Christian faith.

"It can be easy to get consumed with your worldly, fleshly train of thought or desires or whatever," Wentz said in a recent wide-ranging interview with the Associated Press. "But when you look at everything from an internal perspective, from a Biblical perspective, and just know that this is so much bigger than just me and my life or my career.

"It just gives me a different perspective with everything that comes my way, the good, the bad, the ugly. It's not always the easiest to kind of have that train of thought. But the Bible talks about having a renewed mind. And so for me, that's a daily thing to have my mind renewed by the Word and just fully surrender."

Wentz plans to embrace Hurts the same way he did Nick Foles, who became a Philly hero after earning Super Bowl MVP honors when he led the Eagles over the Patriots in February 2018 at U.S. Bank Stadium. Foles and Wentz were close during the two seasons they played together. They share the same faith, went to the same church along with third-string quarterback Nate Sudfeld and spent plenty of time together. Hurts has similar religious beliefs.

"I believe wholeheartedly that we're going to hit it off and we'll be stronger together for the good of the team," Wentz said of Hurts, who threw for 3,851 yards and 32 touchdowns at Oklahoma in 2019. "It just seems like you instantly connect and you instantly know that person on a deeper level because of the mutual relationship that you share with Christ."