What's next for Carson Wentz? The Eagles can't move on anytime soon.

His contract means the Eagles can't move on easily.

On Tuesday, ESPN reported that the Philadelphia Eagles would be benching quarterback Carson Wentz in favor of second-round rookie Jalen Hurts. The fact that Wentz has been benched is not overly surprising considering how poorly he’s played this season.

There are plenty of issues with the current setup of the Eagles offense, but that doesn’t completely excuse Wentz posting career-lows in yards per attempt (6.0) and passer rating (72.8) and a career-high in interception percentage (3.7%). Under most circumstances, this would be the last we’ve seen of Wentz in an Eagles uniform. He has unequivocally been one of the worst quarterbacks in the NFL and, in a vacuum, it would be difficult to suggest that the Eagles bring him back as the starter in 2021.

Unfortunately for the Eagles, they’re not operating in a vacuum. They owe Wentz money.

Lots and lots of money.

In fact, the four year, $128 million contract extension that Wentz signed prior to the start of the 2019 season hasn’t even kicked in yet.

That means that there’s no clean and easy way for the Eagles to move on in the near future. Cap implications — I’ll get into that later — prevent that.

The Eagles are almost certainly going to have Wentz for the next season. They’ll likely take the rest of this season to see what they have with Jalen Hurts, but there’s enough reason to believe that Wentz will be on the Eagles roster in 2021 in a last ditch effort to revive his career in Philadelphia.

Wentz is just a few years removed from playing a huge role in the Eagles obtaining the No. 1 seed during their Super Bowl LII run against the New England Patriots. Even though, for various reasons, Wentz has played the worst football of his career, he’s still likely to get another chance with the Eagles in 2021 unless Hurts plays like a Pro Bowler to end the season.

If Wentz plays well in 2021, Philadelphia should have no problem continuing to pay out the rest of his contract. If not, his contract is rather easy to move on from in 2022.

Let’s dig in on exactly why it’d be so hard to move Wentz any time soon.

According to Spotrac, the Eagles would be saddled with a dead cap charge of $59.2 million in the event that Wentz is cut or traded after the year. Cutting Wentz is out of the question for the Eagles.

There’s no crafty way to get out of this deal. Whether this hypothetical release is listed as a pre-June 1, or post-June 1, the Eagles would incur massive salary cap ramifications.

If Wentz is cut prior to June 1st, the Eagles would not only take on the full $59.2 million dead cap charge, they would also lose a whopping $24.5 million in cap space. That’s $83.7 million that the Eagles wouldn’t have access to for a pivotal 2021 season. A release that occurs after June 1 would spread out the dead cap charges over the 2021 and 2022 seasons, a hefty $49.7 million in 2021 and $24.5 million in 2022. Not only would the dead cap charges take a cleaver to the Eagles cap space, they would also lose $15 million in cap space for the 2021 season.

He can’t be cut in the immediate future.

Now, trading Wentz is more feasible, but at this point it would have to be a similar trade to the one the Cleveland Browns executed for Brock Osweiler in 2017. Houston had to give the Browns a second round pick to take on Osweiler’s egregiously awful contract (that was a catastrophe the moment that it was signed.) It was worth it for the Texans to give away a premium pick to get rid of Osweilier, especially with Deshaun Watson ready to take over.

Unfortunately for the Eagles, trading Wentz won’t really offer much relief. If the Eagles trade Wentz prior to June 1, they will still get hit with a $33.8 million dead cap charge with negligible cap savings to counteract that.

A trade that occurs after June 1 is really the only way for the Eagles to move on from Wentz before the start of the 2021 season. The Eagles would still get hit with a $9.2 million dead cap charge for the 2021 season and be rewarded with $25.4 million in cap savings. They would then incur a $24.5 million dead cap charge in 2022.

The finances suggest that there’s only one option for the Eagles to get rid of Wentz while also providing enough financial flexibility to build a competitive roster in 2021. However, the Eagles would have to be willing to part with premium draft picks in order to sway a team into taking on his contract — he really has been playing that poorly.

The dead cap on Wentz’s contract drops to $24.5 million, which can be spread out into dead cap charges of roughly nine million dollars in 2022 and $15 million in 2023.

Wentz’s time as the Eagles quarterback may be coming to a close, but he’ll at least be on the roster for another season — and probably under center.