Jared Goff vs. Carson Wentz: Who's the Future of the NFL?

Ever play Would You Rather? Good party game, especially when you want to channel your inner grade-schooler and pose dilemmas featuring pairs of particularly nasty options. For a PG-but-icky example, would you rather lick the bottom of a stranger's shoes or eat a hamburger off a bathroom floor?  

It's become apparent that the ultimate and most obvious football-related "would you rather" for the 2017 season actually involves two seemingly good options. Of the NFL's two breakout sophomore quarterbacks, would you rather have Jared Goff or Carson Wentz leading your team?

With all due respect to Dak Prescott, he's not exactly the centerpiece of the Dallas Cowboys offense. Top 2015 pick Jameis Winston has yet to get it together for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, third-year Tennessee Titans stud Marcus Mariota has lacked consistency and durability, and we don't have enough of a sample to work with when assessing Houston Texans rookie Deshaun Watson, who tore his ACL earlier this month after a superb start to his career. 

That leaves Goff and Wentz as the top two current candidates in the NFL's unofficial search for a new face of the league. That role's gotta belong to a quarterback these days, and professional football's most recent frontmen—Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts, Tom Brady of the New England Patriots, Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers, maybe Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints—either have or are preparing to pass their batons. 

And while both could go on to have tremendous careers, there's a decent chance either Goff or Wentz still becomes a bust.

It's too early to draw major conclusions about Winston and/or Mariota, but they were selected 1-2 in 2015 and Winston has turned the ball over an NFC-high 51 times since coming into the league.

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The top two selections of the 2012 draft, Andrew Luck of the Colts and Robert Griffin III of the Washington Redskins, were superb as rookies, but both of their careers have stalled completely. 

Atop the 1999 draft, Donovan McNabb panned out for the Philadelphia Eagles. Tim Couch did not for the Cleveland Browns.

One year earlier, Peyton Manning succeeded for the Colts, while Ryan Leaf did not for the San Diego Chargers.

Drew Bledsoe was a success as a top pick for New England in 1993, but No. 2 overall selection Rick Mirer was a bust for the Seattle Seahawks. 

Quarterbacks haven't excelled together after being selected first and second overall in the last four decades. So even after starting strong, history doesn't favor both Goff and Wentz. 

And even if you don't believe Goff and Wentz are the NFL's primary waiters in the wings, the comparison is sure to result in a lively debate. That's because the two are just so...comparable. And they'll never escape each other, since they were selected 1-2 atop the 2016 draft. The Los Angeles Rams traded up to land Goff, just as the Eagles dealt up for Wentz. Both performed terribly while receiving little support as rookies, with Goff and Wentz ranking 34th and 27th, respectively, among 34 qualified quarterbacks in terms of Football Outsiders' DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average). 

And yet both have become MVP candidates in 2017. 

In fact, the latest MVP odds from Bovada list Wentz as the favorite and Goff as the second runner-up, with only Brady wedged between the two sophomores. 

Joe Robbins/Getty Images

In terms of DVOA, Wentz and Goff both rank in the top five. Among qualified quarterbacks who are currently healthy, those two, Brady, Brees and Kansas City Chiefs veteran Alex Smith are the only five with passer ratings in the triple digits. Wentz's Eagles have the NFL's best record (8-1), but Goff's Rams are among five teams that are just one game back at 7-2. Goff's Rams are averaging an NFL-best 32.9 points per game, but Wentz's Eagles rank second at 31.4. 

Entering the home stretch here in the middle of November, it's now safe to conclude there's nothing fluky about what either young signal-caller has done. 

Of course, Goff and Wentz have different backgrounds and are different quarterbacks.

Wentz is bigger and more naturally athletic, and while his body of work in college was impressive, he entered the league with an asterisk coming out of Division-1AA (FCS) North Dakota State. He was a raw, somewhat mysterious prospect. 

Goff came into the league as less of a mystery after being polished as a three-year Pac-12 starter at Cal. He isn't as athletically marvelous as his Philadelphia counterpart, but he proved time and again in college that he can make every throw.  

Despite those differences, the two have enjoyed similarly successful 2017 campaigns. And when you look at their career rate-based numbers at the year-and-a-half mark, the similarities are striking. 

Category	Jared Goff	Carson Wentz
Record	7-9	15-10
Completion %	58.4	61.8
Touchdowns	21	39
Touchdown %	4.3	4.3
Interceptions	11	19
Interception %	2.3	2.1
TD/INT ratio	1.9	2.1
Yards/attempt	7.1	6.7
Yards/game	217.1	241.8
Passer rating	85.5	87.3
Sack rate	7.4	5.9
4th-Q comebacks	0	2
Rush yards/game	4.0	14.4
20-yard passes/game	3.1	2.6
40-yard passes/game	0.6	0.5
Third down rating	93.6	87.4
Red zone TD/INT	16/1	28/1

Wentz has the edge in the majority of those categories, but that shouldn't be surprising, considering how his career started in comparison to Goff's. While Goff held a tablet in Los Angeles, Wentz shocked the football world right from the get-go in 2016. Four starts into his career, his Eagles were 3-1, he had a 7-to-1 touchdown-to-interception ratio and he ranked seventh in the league with a 103.5 passer rating. 

The shock began to wear off after that, though, and opposing defenses caught up. No longer taking the league by surprise, Wentz had the NFL's lowest passer rating (72.3) among 27 quarterbacks who threw at least 250 passes during the final 12 weeks of the 2016 season.

But expand that range to passers with 200-plus attempts and two quarterbacks had lower ratings than Wentz: Matt Barkley of the Chicago Bears (68.3) and Jared Goff (63.6). 

Goff didn't even earn a chance to start for a bad Rams team until Week 11. He started each of L.A.'s final seven games, but he lost all of them, throwing just five touchdown passes to seven interceptions for a team that never scored more than 21 points and tallied more than 14 on just two occasions. 

Goff was never going to benefit from the same element of surprise that Wentz did, and he suffered from having a late start with a four-win team that objectively offered him less support than the seven-win Eagles offered Wentz (Philly ranked fifth in terms of team DVOA, while the Rams ranked 30th).

Wentz and Goff clearly benefited from their offseason work, as well as the added support their teams brought in (new receivers in Philly; a new left tackle, a revamped receiving corps and a Goff-friendly offensive system in L.A.). 

Harry How/Getty Images

Both are taking advantage of better situations, making better decisions and showing off refined techniques. Concerns about Wentz's throwing mechanics have disappeared, and his footwork has improved greatly. Goff was sacked on an NFL-high 11.3 percent of his dropbacks as a rookie, but he and head coach Sean McVay's new-look offense have worked to reduce that rate to 4.4 percent this season. Only five qualified passers have been sacked less frequently. 

So they're both improving rapidly, which is scary considering how effective they've already been. But it's also fair to wonder if Goff is making up for lost time and developing at an even faster rate than his East Coast counterpart. 

Just look at their numbers from their two most recent games: 

Last two starts	Comp.%	TD-INT	Yards	Rating
Jared Goff	66.1	7-0	666	143.7
Carson Wentz	55.9	6-1	410	104.5

As NFL.com senior analyst Gil Brandt pointed out, Goff just became the first quarterback in Rams history to go over 300 yards with three-plus touchdowns and no picks in consecutive outings, which is pretty amazing, considering how dominant modern-day Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner was. 

Wentz's hot start was an aberration, and it's obvious Goff was victimized by the Jeff Fisher-era Rams last year. So let's remove the first six starts for both quarterbacks and see how they compare: 

Category	Jared Goff	Carson Wentz
Record	7-3	11-8
Completion %	61.5	61.3
Touchdowns	16	31
Touchdown %	5.3	4.3
Interceptions	4	16
Interception %	1.3	2.2
TD/INT ratio	4.0	1.9
Yards/attempt	8.3	6.6
Yards/game	250.5	248.4
Passer rating	100.2	85.9
Sack rate	6.2	5.8
20-yard passes/game	3.9	2.5
40-yard passes/game	1.0	0.5
Third down rating	109.3	87.1
Red zone TD/INT	12/0	22/1

You can see the edge Goff appears to be gaining. 

Now, a big reason why Wentz is leading the MVP race is he has accomplished a lot that isn't measured by broad passing statistics. There was that Houdini-level escape from a sack to break a division rival's back on the road in prime time last month, and a multitude of big plays in a fourth-quarter comeback against another rival one month prior. He scrambled for 24 yards on a crucial third down as the Eagles tried to pull off a frantic comeback in Kansas City in Week 2, and he's rushed for double-digit yardage on nine other plays this season. 

He's also become Mr. Third Down. The 24-year-old has the league's top passer rating on that all-important down.

Quarterback	Comp.%	TD	INT	YPA	Rating
Carson Wentz	65.9	10	2	9.3	125.1
Tom Brady	65.9	6	0	8.4	114.6
Jared Goff	64.8	7	1	7.8	109.5
Matthew Stafford	58.7	8	1	7.8	107.8

And while Goff also makes that list (and has been just as clutch in the red zone), the Eagles have converted a ridiculous 37.8 percent of the time when facing 3rd-and-10 or longer, compared to just 20.0 percent for Goff's Rams.   

Goff doesn't do as much intangibly, he's not as mobile (he has just one 10-yard run in his career) and he probably benefits more from his supporting cast and his offense than Wentz does, which is revealed in their respective air yardage stats. 

Per Pro Football Focus' Twitter account, through Week 9, 62.6 percent of Wentz's yardage had come through the air. That compared to only 51.0 percent for Goff. The former ranks near the top of the league in that category, while the latter ranks near the bottom. 

It's the only major chasm between the two when it comes to their passing numbers. 

Goff has hit on more big plays as a passer and leads the league in yards per attempt, which is a crucial way to gauge a quarterback's productivity. But while a quarterback deserves some credit for his receivers gaining yards after the catch, those 20- and 40-yard completion and yards-per-attempt advantages are negated to a degree by the fact Wentz is accounting for a lot more of his yardage in the air. 

That speaks to the fact Wentz is probably more of a gunslinger, which complicates this debate. Do you prefer a risk-taking playmaker with more clear-cut flaws, or a safer quarterback who is likely to make fewer mistakes? 

As long as both continue to flourish, that might eventually be what this comes down to. 

But there's still also a decent chance either Goff or Wentz flames out, just as Griffin, Couch, Leaf and Mirer all did when chosen alongside successful quarterbacks atop their respective drafts. 

It all has me wondering if instead of picking between these two intriguing young quarterbacks, I'd be better off deciding whether to lick the bottom of a stranger's shoes or eat a hamburger off a bathroom floor.

Brad Gagnon has covered the NFL for Bleacher Report since 2012.