The next four weeks should belong to Jalen Hurts. The Eagles can worry about Carson Wentz later. | David Murphy

Doug Pederson didn’t have a choice. There were no other options. He’d changed the personnel around the quarterback. He’d changed the process for calling in plays to the quarterback. He’d changed the scheme that the quarterback was responsible for executing. But for a fifth straight week, the Eagles offense looked incapable of functioning. So Pederson did the only thing left for him to do. He changed the quarterback.

It’s anybody’s guess where the Eagles go from here. There are no good solutions, only an obvious one. The Eagles have nothing to gain by running Wentz back out there this year. There is nothing they can salvage from his smoldering wreck of his season. Loyalty? Feelings? Confidence? At this point, none of them can be unshattered.

The damage was done long before Pederson yanked Wentz in the third quarter of a 30-16 loss to the Packers on Sunday evening. You can argue it was done all the way back in May, when the Eagles drafted a quarterback in the second round and wished good luck to the one they already had. The wisdom of that decision is a moot point now. The next four weeks will tell us plenty about that. If the Eagles offense performs as it did during Hurts’ two series of action against the Packers, it will legitimize the extraordinary risk the organization took in adding him to the fold. If it suffers the same regression that has followed its prior bouts of competence — as it appeared to do on Hurts’ third series — it will legitimize the criticisms that so many of us had. Time always tells.

Either way, the Eagles are headed toward an offseason unlike any they have experienced in Jeffrey Lurie’s tenure as owner. With regard to the salary cap, a trade of Wentz is not a complete impossibility. With regard to the long-term strategic plan, though, it is close to unthinkable. Waving the white flag on 2020 is one thing. But is it really possible that the Eagles have seen enough out of Wentz, and will see enough out of Hurts, to conclude that their best chance at winning a Super Bowl in the next five to10 years is with Hurts as their quarterback and Wentz playing elsewhere?

It’s a conundrum whose circumstances and implications are too mind-bending to fathom at this point in time. Instead, let’s focus on what we know about the here-and-now. Even if Wentz remains in the Eagles long-term plans, the best thing for them and him might be to spend the last month of the season on the bench. It would give him a chance to walk away from a season in good health for the first time since he was a rookie. It would give him a chance to reset a mind that has obviously been taxed by the team’s dysfunction. And it would give him his best chance of walking into the offseason with his head held high. Because if the quarterback position wasn’t the primary cause of the Eagles’ stunning ineptitude under Wentz, then it will presumably show as Hurts gives it the old college try.

In that regard, Hurts’ first extended action left a lot open to interpretation. His ability to buy time and make plays with his feet paid obvious dividends, none more so than on the scrambling, 32-yard touchdown pass that he threw to Greg Ward on third-and-forever to spark an electric but short-lived rally. He looked calm, and confident, and more or less in control. He made a number of strong, catchable, on-target throws, including a perfectly-placed 34-yarder to Jalen Raegor, who had a quarter-step on his man down the left sideline. At the same time, he was under pressure on nearly every snap, and he made several throws that reflected those circumstances, most notably an interception that never had a chance.

Get Eagles analysis in your inbox every weekday during the season.

At the moment, the only thing we can conclude definitively is that he should get a full week of practice as the No. 1 starter, and a game plan devised with the understanding that he will be the one executing it. Where that leaves Wentz is a conversation for a future time.