All indications are that there is a rift between Carson Wentz and the Philadelphia Eagles, the team that made him No. 2 overall just five years ago, drove his MVP candidacy to a Super Bowl just four years ago, and only two years ago. recently signed for a $ 128 million expansion. But do not assume that most Eagles fans are ready to say goodbye. Amid reports that Philly is on the verge of swapping his much-maligned fullback as part of a total rebuild, hordes of Eagles loyalists have begun flooding Wentz’s foundation with donations.
On Tuesday, 97.5 kicked off The John Kincade Show of Fanatic Project 11, encouraging fans to contribute to Wentz’s AO1 foundation as a way to pay tribute to his impact on and off the field over the past five years . Just over 24 hours later, the foundation tells CBS Sports that more than 650 fans have already signed up and donated more than $ 9,100 in Wentz’s name.
The AO1 Foundation, which was founded in 2017, politely declined to elaborate on the initiative ‘because it is traded around Carson’, a matter for which the foundation has not commented. “We are very grateful,” a spokesman said, “for the support we received from the Project 11 campaign.”
John Kincade, the radio host behind the campaign, is happy to expand it. For him, it’s just as much a commemoration of Wentz as a “personal crusade” to change the story surrounding Eagles fans. Jamie Lynch, co-host of Kincade, recently raised Bills Mafia, Buffalo’s rabid fans, who could create a disappointment in positivity, through mass donations to issues related to opposing players like Andy Dalton and Lamar Jackson.
Now, with Project 11, Kincade intends Philly to do the same.
“I’m tired of defending the Philadelphia fan base,” he says. “You talk about the crazy edge, this small section, which is always presented as the norm. Look, I’m very critical of how Carson handled this situation and how the Eagles handled this situation, but I do not want to see that people burn Carson Wentz jerseys and want to make the idiots of this fan base talk to everyone. ‘
Project 11 was named after Wentz’s No. 11 jersey number, but also the 11 wins that Wentz started in 2017, when he led the Eagles to an NFC East title and a home field advantage for the only Super Bowl. championship in team history.
“If money is tight, donate $ 1.11,” Kincade urges fans. “Donate $ 11.11, whatever it is. Let everyone know that on the way to the door you appreciate what he has accomplished.”
At the moment, it’s hard to quantify Wentz’s football career – assuming it came to its conclusion in Philly – as anything but a bittersweet tale of ‘what could have been’. Kincade is even blunter: “Honestly, I think the story is going to be a huge failure in the end,” he says. “I think it’s a failure that it does not work out.” After all, Wentz was once the superstar of the city. The North Dakota kid who erupted at the scene with just a week ‘s notice that he would be a beginner. The aw-shucks playmaker on a sure path to be remembered as the greatest QB that has ever captivated the franchise reins.
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When the Eagles won it all in February 2018, with Nick Foles taking the fate of the injured Wentz, the question was not, Can they do it again with Wentz? It was, How many times can they do it? The organization was so sure – so determined – Wentz was their old that they allowed Foles to sail freely to another team after two straight playoff games in Wentz’s place. Because they saw the same things that everyone saw: Carson was the man. He was at his best top five; top-12, in the worst case. He was the Eagles’ engine. The reason to tune in Sunday. The reason to believe in every play.
Now, after Wentz’s unprecedented regression in 2020 on a rogue composite roster, with a since revamped coaching staff, it’s clear that the promise of no. 11’s outside world upside down just that was: a promise. Nothing more. At least in Philly. As reports believe, Wentz is ready for a fresh start, and the Eagles have painted themselves into such a corner that they have to oblige.
“You can not show me a divorce in life where one person in the divorce is completely blameless,” Kincade said, pointing back to Project 11. “But it’s about saying we recognize what the man did well. , what the man does Some of his best work as a Philadelphia Eagle was in the community. We know no one in the Philadelphia neighborhood who believes that Carson is not very civil, and that his foundation does not do wonderful things … And Carson puts a little elbow fat behind it. ‘
That he does.
Last summer, when Wentz was willing to fight the perceptions of shaky dedication from an Eagles front office just set up by fellow QB Jalen Hurts, he delivered his food truck in the Philly area again in an emergency grocery service. While food banks were depleted and families scrambled at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, he lit a $ 100,000 renovation of the New Jersey home base in the truck and turned the AO1 site into a packing facility serving local schools , hospitals and police departments would serve. . For that, his food truck served meals – 100 percent free – to anyone who encountered them in the Philly area.
Later that summer, when the country reckoned with racial tensions and police shootings, Wentz contributed $ 460,000 in grants issued by the Eagles’ Social Justice Fund, which supported two dozen different organizations specializing in everything from educational equality. and community policing to youth mentorship. In previous years, he has given hundreds of thousands more, as well as personal time with children and families experiencing medical problems, which resulted in a humanitarian award in 2018.
The two times Wentz hosted his softball game, attracting dozens of teammates and tens of thousands of fans to Citizens Bank Park, he raised $ 1.35 million for other AO1 initiatives: Camp Conquerors, an outdoor children’s ministry; Mountain migrants, hunting, fishing and small group youth shelters; and the Haiti Sports Complex, building an 18,750-square-foot multipurpose facility – with basketball courts, soccer fields, dormitories and WiFi park – for underprivileged youth in the Caribbean. All are designed to ‘show the love of God’ by nourishing people both physically and spiritually.
Wentz’s charity never wavered, see, not even when his numbers on the field, his health, and his organizational status did.
That’s a big reason why Kincade says Project 11 is likely to explode. Corporate sponsors are already on hand to support Wentz through the same campaign. More fans are doing the same. So much so that Kincade thinks it is “absolutely uninformed to say that Eagles fans are chasing him out of town,” as some national experts have suggested. ‘This is a dispute within the organization. Overwhelmingly, fans want Carson back … Anyone who says otherwise uses lazy imagery. ‘
The Wentz-Eagles saga eventually ends, however, but there will be a tragedy in the story: if he returns to form, he will have to do it elsewhere, either because he fled for a public competition in a city that always of the backing, because the Eagles have undermined their own biggest investment, or both. He is destined to be an even more divisive franchise legend on the field than Donovan McNabb. If and when he left Philadelphia, he would do so as a broken hero or as an unintentional villain – Batman after Bane slapped him on the back, or Harvey Dent after his robustness twisted his own body and allies.
This does not mean that the good will be forgotten.
“I think he will always be part of the greatest sports story in Philadelphia ever told,” Kincade says. “He will always be a part of it. The year they won it all, he put the ball on the 25-year-old line. And then Nick Foles takes it in … We love Nick Foles, but we love Carson too. “