Torrey Smith, former Eagles wideout and permanent Super Bowl champion, has one of the more active and personality-driven Twitter accounts in the NFL. In a league awash with Nick Foles-style social media, Smith is a breath of fresh air.
Smith's takes are especially appreciated when he's taking on people he disagrees with, as he did Thursday afternoon.
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Fox Sports personality and general gasbag Skip Bayless is a consistent Eagles non-believer. On Thursday, Bayless lobbed this tweet up to the internet, knowing full well he would get yelled at online, which is the whole point:
First of all, yes, the Eagles have a quarterback. More than one, in fact. Their best quarterback is named Carson Wentz.
The implication in the tweet, of course, is that Wentz doesn't measure up to the talent around him. I would personally disagree with this assessment, as would the hordes of NFL talking heads and evaluators who think Wentz could win the league's MVP award this season.
We're a long ways off from real MVP talk, but this is a clown tweet. Smith saw Bayless's tweet on Thursday, and took the time to respond in an appropriate fashion:
Look, Smith has a point. Bayless has a history of talking baselessly about sports, and this is no different. Carson Wentz has thrown 70 touchdowns and 28 interceptions in 40 games as the Eagles' starting quarterback, a ratio most quarterbacks in the league would kill for, and was a shoo-in for MVP in 2017 before he suffered a season-ending knee injury.
Wentz has plenty of room to improve, from his accuracy on short throws to his willingness to unleash deep balls, and he needs to stay healthy for the Eagles to flourish, but he's shown numerous times that his ceiling in the NFL is a Top 3 quarterback.
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Also, I'm in the same boat as Smith: if I could get a high-paying job saying whatever I want about teams and athletes, I'd certainly take it. I think Smith would probably do a better, more nuanced job than Bayless.
Finally, it's exciting, at least for Eagles fans, to see one of Wentz's former teammates come to his defense in such a public fashion. The team committed to Wentz with big money this offseason; it's nice to know people he once played with still think of him, and his talents, fondly.
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