Carson Wentz has gone from unknown to potentially the first quarterback taken off the board in a very quick amount of time. The North Dakota State star has been lighting it up for four years in college, but no one noticed until he shot onto the scene and has everyone's attention at the Senior Bowl this year. Wentz has been impressing in the first round of practices down in Mobile, Alabama with a lot of teams eyeing him as a draft pick.
According to ESPN's Mel Kiper Jr., Wentz has passed the initial eye tests during practices at the Senior Bowl. This game could really help the quarterback get taken first in the NFL Draft considering both Jared Goff and Paxton Lynch are not there. Wentz has reportedly displayed a quick throwing motion, good arm strength and great mobility inside and outside the pocket helping his draft stock hit a high. There are several teams eye quarterbacks in the early picks either to start immediately or develop for the future, so where could the quarterback land?
According to the Dallas Morning News, the Dallas Cowboys like the idea of drafting Wentz No.4 overall to develop for the future. After all of the collarbone injuries, the team is aware that Tony Romo cannot play forever and they learned the hard way what happens when they do not have a quality backup in place to replace him. The Cowboys have a lot of needs to fill and must decide if Wentz is worth taking the risk on at No.4 or if talent remains in a later round.
"The thing we still keep going back to is, we've got to have a better solution and a better answer if something happens to Tony that'll give us a chance to win football games and be more competitive than we were," team vice president Stephen Jones said via the Dallas Morning News. "You look at what's in the playoffs and who's in the final four and who was in the final eight, you don't see a lot of people in there with their backup quarterbacks in there really making significant differences in the playoffs. But what I do think we should be able to do is play better football than we played this year."
The Cowboys could always wait and draft a quarterback later. ESPN's Todd McShay noted that this year's class is hard to evaluate and no one is really a home run hit. Connor Cook, Christian Hackenberg and Jake Coker will all be available in a later round and could offer up the same thing as Wentz allowing the Cowboys to draft another position in the first round.
The Cowboys need a backup quarterback regardless. They have been linked to Johnny Manziel and Robert Griffin III. Colin Kaepernick has been lingering around. The team has a lot of directions they could go in to fill this need, but Wentz continues to be the most popular name surfacing around the franchise.
