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Business

The Fed’s New Key Inflation Rate Cooled In November; S&P 500 Futures Slip

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The core inflation rate most closely watched by the Federal Reserve eased further in November, though a touch less than expected. Yet Fed chief Jerome Powell has recently put the focus on a new “most important” inflation rate to make the case for continued rate hikes: PCE services less housing, which slipped to 4.3% last month. The S&P 500 rose modestly, reversing early losses following the personal consumption expenditures report.




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The PCE (personal consumption expenditures) price index rose 0.1% on the month. The PCE inflation rate continued to ease from June’s 40-year high of 7%, slipping to 5.5%. Core prices, minus food and energy, rose 0.2% on the month as the annual core inflation rate eased to 4.7%.

Wall Street had expected a 0.2% increase in the PCE price index and a 0.2%, with an overall 5.5% inflation rate and 4.6% core rate.

Powell Shifts Goalposts With New Key Inflation Rate

Powell’s favorite new inflation rate happens to be the most problematic one for the S&P 500. The gauge factors out goods inflation, which is rapidly falling. It also excludes housing inflation, which appears set to fall in 2023 as government data catches up to the stalling growth of market rents.

That leaves only core services other than housing, such as health care, education, hospitality and haircuts. Because price changes for such services are closely linked to wage growth, they provide the best signal of where core inflation is heading, Powell said.

The focus on this statistic is so new that it isn’t provided in Commerce Department’s report or a subject of Wall Street estimates. IBD calculations show that the price index for PCE services minus housing and energy rose 0.3% on the month and 4.3% from a year ago, down from October’s upwardly revised 4.7% annual increase.

The tamer monthly inflation reading for PCE services minus housing and energy came as transportation services prices fell 2.1% from October, but remained 11.8% above year-ago levels. Health care services inflation eased to a 0.2% monthly gain.

The Fed’s new key inflation rate isn’t great for the S&P 500 because it puts the focus on the strongest part of the economy: the ultratight labor market. Until the job market cracks, wage growth is likely to remain stubbornly high, and the Fed may hike its benchmark interest rate higher and for longer than markets anticipate.

S&P 500, Treasury Yields React To PCE Inflation Rate

After the PCE inflation report, the S&P 500 added 0.4% in Friday morning’s stock market action. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.3%, while the Nasdaq composite edged up 0.2%, after sliding at the open.

The S&P 500 and broader market have come under pressure since the Fed’s half-point rate hike and projections for further tightening to the 5%-5.25% range in 2023. Worries about the earnings outlook and China’s Covid blow-up are adding to concerns about Fed overtightening. Yet the bond market doesn’t appear to be buying Fed guidance. As of Friday morning, markets were pricing in a peak rate of 4.75%-5%.

Through Thursday’s close, the S&P 500 is off 20.3% from its record closing high on Jan. 4. While the S&P 500 remains 6.9% above its 52-week closing low, the index has fallen back below its 50-day an 200-day moving averages.

The 10-year Treasury yield rose 6 basis points to 3.75%.

Make sure to read IBD’s daily afternoon The Big Picture column to stay on top of underlying market trends and what they mean for your trading decisions.

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Business

Key inflation measure shows price pressures cooled off in November, but remain high

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New York
CNN
 — 

Another key inflation measure shows price pressures cooled off but remained stubbornly high in November, despite the Federal Reserve’s monthslong efforts to fight inflation through higher interest rates.

The Producer Price Index, which measures prices paid for goods and services by businesses before they reach consumers, rose 7.4% in November compared to a year earlier, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. That’s down from the revised 8.1% gain reported for October.

US stocks fell immediately after the report, as economists surveyed by Refinitiv had expected wholesales prices to have risen just 7.2%, annually. The higher-than-expected inflation readings raised concerns about whether the Fed will be able to slow the pace of rate hikes.

But futures for the Fed funds rate still show a strong likelihood of a half-point increase at the central bank’s policymaking meeting next week, rather than the three-quarter point hike instituted at the last four meetings.

The PPI report generally gets less attention that the corresponding Consumer Price Index, which measures prices paid by US consumers for goods and services. But this is a rare month in which the PPI report came out before the CPI report, which is due out Tuesday.

That and the Fed meeting scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday next week is making this inflation report of particular importance to investors.

“Next Tuesday’s CPI release will be more important than today’s data, but with traders on edge, any indication that prices remain elevated and that inflation is more sticky than currently believed is a negative for markets,” said Chris Zaccarelli, Chief Investment Officer for Independent Advisor Alliance.

Overall prices rose a seasonally adjusted 0.3% compared to October — the same monthly increase as was reported in both September and October — but were slightly higher than the 0.2% rise forecast by economists.

Stripping out volatile food and energy prices, core PPI rose 6.2% for the year ending in November, down from the revised 6.8% increase the previous month. Economists had forecast only a 5.9% increase.

Core PPI posted a 0.4% increase from October, a far bigger rise than the revised 0.1% month-over-month rise in that previous month, and twice as big as the 0.2% rise forecast by economists.

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Business

The Fed’s favorite inflation measure cooled in October

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CNN Business
 — 

A key measure of consumer prices slowed somewhat in October, another hopeful sign that inflation pressures could be moderating.

The Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, or PCE, rose 6% in October compared to a year earlier, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. That’s down from the upwardly revised 6.3% annual increase reported for September.

PCE is the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge since it gives a more complete picture of consumer prices.

Prices rose by 0.3% in October compared to September, the same monthly increase as in each of the previous two months.

Stripping out volatile food and energy, core PCE rose 5% over the last 12 months and 0.2% month on month. That compares to September’s upwardly revised 5.2% annual increase and a month-on-month jump of 0.5%.

The 12-month gain in core PCE matched the forecasts of economists surveyed by Refinitiv, while the one-month gain was slightly lower than the 0.3% rise that had been forecast.

Inflation pressures have become a major concern for the US economy, prompting the Fed to hike interest rates at an unprecedented rate in an effort to get prices under control.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in a speech Wednesday that the Fed could pull back on the pace of its aggressive rate hikes as soon as December. While Powell has stressed the importance of not relying on one particular data point, Thursday’s inflation reading likely confirms that plan.

“Given this inflation data, the Fed should be comfortable with a downshift in the pace of rate hikes at the upcoming meeting,” wrote Jeffrey Roach, chief economist for LPL Financial, in a note Thursday.

The PCE report also showed big jumps in both personal income and personal spending. Personal income jumped 0.7% in October, up from a 0.4% increase in September. And spending by individuals rose 0.8% in the latest reading, and by 0.5% when the effect of higher prices was taken into account. It was the biggest jump in inflation-adjusted spending since January. The main drivers of the increased spending was new cars and trucks, furniture and other big-ticket items for the home and eating out.

Both of those readings could feed underlying inflation pressures going forward. Greater demand for goods and services can push prices higher unless there is a corresponding increase in supply to meet that demand. And higher income — fueled by the strong labor market — tends to fuel greater demand.

“The consumer spending numbers … included in this month’s release show that households also seem to refuse to give up their spending habits in the face of gathering economic storm clouds,” wrote Kurt Rankin, senior economist for PNC, in a note Thursday.

“A shift back toward big-ticket household … spending could represent a classic signal of inflation’s self-perpetuation. When consumer see prices constantly rising, they tend to buy now rather than risk a higher price in the future.”

But if the report was something of a mixed set of data for the Fed, with the lower inflation balanced by higher incomes and spending, that combination was good news for the Biden administration, which took the unusual step of commenting on a report that rarely gets attention from the White House.

“We are seeing initial signs that we are making progress in tackling inflation, even as we make the transition to more steady, stable economic growth,” wrote President Joe Biden in a statement released Thursday morning. “The American people should have confidence that our plan to tackle inflation, without giving up all the historic economic gains American workers have achieved, is working.”

This story is developing and will be updated.

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Business

Home prices cooled at a record pace in August, S&P Case-Shiller says

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House for Sale by Owner, Forest Hills, Queens, New York.

Lindsey Nicholson | UCG | Universal Images Group | Getty Images

Home prices are still higher than they were a year ago, but gains are shrinking at the fastest pace on record, according to one key metric, as the housing market struggles under sharply higher interest rates.

Prices in August were 13% higher nationally compared with August 2021, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index. That is down from a 15.6% annual gain in the previous month. The 2.6% difference in those monthly comparisons is the largest in the history of the index, which was launched in 1987, meaning price gains are decelerating at a record pace.

The 10-city composite, which tracks the biggest housing markets in the United States, rose 12.1% year over year in August, versus a 14.9% gain in July. The 20-city composite, which includes a broader array of metropolitan areas, was up 13.1%, compared with a 16% increase the prior month.

“The forceful deceleration in U.S. housing prices that we noted a month ago continued in our report for August 2022,” wrote Craig Lazzara, Managing Director at S&P DJI in a release. “Price gains decelerated in every one of our 20 cities. These data show clearly that the growth rate of housing prices peaked in the spring of 2022 and has been declining ever since.”

Leading the price gains in August were Miami, Tampa and Charlotte, with year-over-year increases of 28.6%, 28% and 21.3%, respectively. All 20 cities reported lower price increases in the year ending in August versus the year ending in July.

The West Coast, which includes some of the costliest housing markets, saw the largest monthly declines, with San Francisco (-4.3%), Seattle (-3.9%) and San Diego (-2.8%) falling the most.

A quick jump in mortgage rates from record lows this year has turned the once red-hot housing market on its heels. The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed home loan started this year right around 3%. By June it stretched over 6% and is now just over 7%, according to Mortgage News Daily.

“With monthly mortgage payments 75% higher than last year, many first-time buyers are locked-out of housing markets, unable to find homes with budgets that have lost $100,000 in purchasing power this year,” said George Ratiu, senior economist at Realtor.com.

He also noted that higher home prices combined with higher interest rates are keeping would-be sellers from listing their homes. They appear to be locked in to their lower rates.

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Business

Home prices cooled at the fastest rate in index history

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A ‘for sale’ sign is displayed outside a single family home on September 22, 2022 in Los Angeles, California.

Allison Dinner | Getty Images

U.S. home prices cooled in July at the fastest rate in the history of the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index, according to a report released Tuesday.

Home prices in July were still higher than they were a year ago, but cooled significantly from June gains. Prices nationally rose 15.8% over July 2021, well below the 18.1% increase in the previous month, according to the report.

The 10-City composite, which tracks prices in major metropolitan areas such as New York and Boston, climbed 14.9% year over year, down from 17.4% in June. The 20-City composite, which adds regions such as the Seattle metro area and greater Detroit, gained 16.1%, down from 18.7% in the previous month. July’s year-over-year gains were lower compared with June in each of the cities covered by the index.

“July’s report reflects a forceful deceleration,” wrote Craig J. Lazzara, managing director at S&P DJI in a release, noting the difference in the annual gains in June and July. The 2.3 percentage point “difference between those two monthly rates of gain is the largest deceleration in the history of the index.”

Tampa, Florida, Miami and Dallas saw the highest annual gains among the 20 cities in July, with increases of 31.8%, 31.7% and 24.7%, respectively. Washington, D.C., Minneapolis and San Francisco saw the smallest gains, but were still well above year-ago levels.

Another recent report from the National Association of Realtors showed home prices softening dramatically from June to July. Prices usually fall during that time, due to the strong seasonality of the housing market, but the decline was three times the average decline historically.

The share of homes with price cuts reached about 20% in August, the same as in 2017, according to Realtor.com.

“For homeowners planning to list, today’s market is significantly different than the one from even 3 weeks ago,” said George Ratiu, senior economist and manager of economic research at Realtor.com.

Home prices are dropping because affordability has weakened dramatically due to fast-rising mortgage rates. The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage started this year around 3%, but by June had briefly surpassed 6%. It remained in the high 5% range throughout July and is now edging toward 7%, making the average monthly payment about 70% higher than it was a year ago.

“As the Federal Reserve continues to move interest rates upward, mortgage financing has become more expensive, a process that continues to this day. Given the prospects for a more challenging macroeconomic environment, home prices may well continue to decelerate,” Lazzara said.

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Science

Two Time Crystals Have Been Successfully Linked Together For The First Time

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Physicists have just taken an amazing step towards quantum devices that sound like something out of science fiction.

For the first time, isolated groups of particles behaving like bizarre states of matter known as time crystals have been linked into a single, evolving system that could be incredibly useful in quantum computing.

 

Following the first observation of the interaction between two time crystals, detailed in a paper two years ago, this is the next step towards potentially harnessing time crystals for practical purposes, such as quantum information processing.

Time crystals, only officially discovered and confirmed a few years ago in 2016, were once thought to be physically impossible. They are a phase of matter very similar to normal crystals, but for one additional, peculiar, and very special property.

In regular crystals, the atoms are arranged in a fixed, three-dimensional grid structure, like the atomic lattice of a diamond or quartz crystal. These repeating lattices can differ in configuration, but any movement they exhibit comes exclusively from external pushes.

In time crystals, the atoms behave a bit differently. They exhibit patterns of movement in time that can’t be so easily explained by an external push or shove. These oscillations – referred to as ‘ticking’ – are locked to a regular and particular frequency.

Theoretically, time crystals tick at their lowest possible energy state – known as the ground state – and are therefore stable and coherent over long periods of time. So, where the structure of regular crystals repeats in space, in time crystals it repeats in space and time, thus exhibiting perpetual ground state motion.

 

“Everybody knows that perpetual motion machines are impossible,” says physicist and lead author Samuli Autti of Lancaster University in the UK.

“However, in quantum physics perpetual motion is okay as long as we keep our eyes closed. By sneaking through this crack we can make time crystals.”

The time crystals the team have been working with consist of quasiparticles called magnons. Magnons are not true particles, but consist of a collective excitation of the spin of electrons, like a wave that propagates through a lattice of spins.

Magnons emerge when helium-3 – a stable isotope of helium with two protons but just one neutron – is cooled to within one ten thousandth of a degree of absolute zero. This creates what is called a B-phase superfluid, a zero-viscosity fluid with low pressure.

In this medium, time crystals formed as spatially distinct Bose-Einstein condensates, each consisting of a trillion magnon quasiparticles.

A Bose-Einstein condensate is formed from bosons cooled to just a fraction above absolute zero (but not reaching absolute zero, at which point atoms stop moving).

This causes them to sink to their lowest-energy state, moving extremely slowly, and coming together close enough to overlap, producing a high density cloud of atoms that acts like one ‘super atom’ or matter wave.

 

When the two time crystals were allowed to touch each other, they exchanged magnons. This exchange influenced the oscillation of each of the time crystals, creating a single system with an option of functioning in two, discrete states. 

In quantum physics, objects that can have more than one state exist in a mix of those states before they’ve been pinned down by a clear measurement. So having a time crystal operating in a two-state system provides rich new pickings as a basis for quantum-based technologies.

Time crystals are a fair way from being deployed as qubits, as there are a significant number of hurdles to solve first. But the pieces are starting to fall into place.

Earlier this year, a different team of physicists announced that they had successfully created room temperature time crystals that don’t need to be isolated from their ambient surroundings.

More sophisticated interactions between time crystals, and the fine control thereof, will need to be developed further, as will observing interacting time crystals without the need for cooled superfluids. But scientists are optimistic.

“It turns out putting two of them together works beautifully, even if time crystals should not exist in the first place,” Autti says. “And we already know they also exist at room temperature.”

The research has been published in Nature Communications.

 

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Science

Water exhibiting bizarre metastable phenomena when compressed or cooled rapidly

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Water cell targets for the Omega experiments. Water is injected into the cell using the fill tubes inserted at the top. Credit: Carol Davis/LLNL

New research involving Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists shows that water can remain liquid in a metastable state when transitioning from liquid to a dense form of ice at higher pressures than previously measured.

Water at extreme conditions has attracted recent attention because of its complex phase diagram, including superionic ice phases having exotic properties that exist at high pressures and densities. To date, 20 unique crystalline ice phases have been found naturally on Earth or in the laboratory. Water also exhibits bizarre metastable phenomena when compressed or cooled very rapidly, which have attracted interest from physicists worldwide for many years.

“If the water is compressed very rapidly, it will remain liquid in a metastable state until finally crystallizing into ice VII at a higher pressure than expected,” said Michelle Marshall, a research scientist at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) at the University of Rochester, a former LLNL postdoc and lead author of the study appearing in Physical Review Letters.

Ice VII is the stable polymorph of water at room temperature and at pressures exceeding ∼2 GPa (more than 19,000 atmospheres]. Recently, ice VII was found naturally on Earth for the first time as inclusions in diamonds sourced deep within the mantle. It may exist inside Jupiter’s icy moons and in water worlds beyond our solar system.

The new research showed how water can remain liquid in a metastable state when undergoing the liquid-to-ice-VII transition at higher pressures than previously measured. Previous experimental work at the giant pulsed-power Z facility showed that the compressed water transforms to ice VII at 7 GPa (69,000 atmospheres) when the water is ramp-compressed over hundreds of nanoseconds. The new experiments instead shifted to use high-power lasers at the Omega Laser Facility to compress water over even shorter timescales (nanoseconds).

Time-integrated image of a laser shot at the Omega Laser Facility to study the liquid to ice VII phase transition in ramp-compressed water. Credit: Eugene Kowaluk/LLE

Just like in previous LLNL work on gold (Au) and platinum (Pt), the most difficult thing is to compress the water gently enough to avoid forming a shockwave that would ruin the experiment (i.e. realizing a shockless ramp compression). Because water is much more compressible than metals like Au and Pt, creating a ramp compression wave in a micrometer-thin water layer requires increasing the pressure load at a much slower rate.

“Even though the pressures we achieve appear very modest compared to other laser-driven ultrafast dynamic compression experiments, these extremely difficult experiments are really at the frontier of what we can do with giant lasers, and that was an exciting challenge,” said LLNL scientist and co-author Marius Millot.

The new data reveal that water can remain liquid to at least 8-9 GPa (79,000-89,000 atmospheres) before crystallizing into ice VII: the freezing pressure increases with the compression rate.

“This means that water can remain liquid to at least 3.5 times higher pressures than expected based on the equilibrium phase diagram,” Marshall said. “It’s really neat to think that we are compressing it so fast that water does not have time to crystallize, so it remains liquid.”

“We are at the frontier of experimental ultrafast science,” Marshall said, “and it was great to collaborate with our theory and simulation colleagues to gain a more detailed picture of what was happening. It is remarkable that the most recent theoretical and numerical advances now provide a detailed understanding of the observed phenomena. This could have implications for our general understanding of phase transformations at extreme conditions.”

This work is part of a broader effort to understand phase transition kinetics in dynamically compressed materials. The ubiquitous nature of water and its complex phase diagram make the liquid-to-ice-VII phase transition an interesting test bed for phase-transition kinetics modeling. SAMSA, an LLNL-developed kinetics model, provides a detailed understanding of the experimental results while relying on the fundamentally simple picture of homogeneous nucleation using classical nucleation theory.

Broadly speaking, this work helps improve material models and understanding, which could have interesting implications for other key areas of research at the Laboratory such as advanced manufacturing and 3D printing. Metastable states and complex crystallization of water also are key for atmospheric science and therefore for climate security.

Come on in, the water is superionic

More information:
M. C. Marshall et al, Metastability of Liquid Water Freezing into Ice VII under Dynamic Compression, Physical Review Letters (2021). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.135701
Provided by
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Citation:
Water exhibiting bizarre metastable phenomena when compressed or cooled rapidly (2021, September 30)
retrieved 1 October 2021
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Sports

Eagles News: Carson Wentz trade market “has cooled”

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Let’s get to the Philadelphia Eagles links …

As Eagles dawdle on Carson Wentz trade, Bears grow impatient – NJ.com
The Eagles are remaining firm on their asking price for Carson Wentz, and the trade market has cooled. A person with knowledge of the Eagles’ negotiations — who was granted anonymity so he could speak freely on an impending trade — told NJ Advance Media the potential trade partners have remained “disciplined” in negotiations, unwilling to meet the Eagles’ demands. “They don’t want to give (Wentz) up for much less than (the Matthew Stafford haul),” another person with knowledge of the negotiations told NJ Advance Media on Tuesday. The Detroit Lions sent Stafford to the Los Angeles Rams in exchange for the Rams’ first-round draft picks in 2022 and 2023, a third-round pick in 2021, and quarterback Jared Goff. The Indianapolis Colts have asked for additional compensation — a player, players or picks — along with Wentz in order to get close to the Eagles’ demands, according to a third person with knowledge of negotiations, who also was granted anonymity. That person said another undisclosed Eagles player has been brought up in discussions.

The Eagles are quickly losing leverage in the effort to trade Carson Wentz – PFT
Two years ago, the Eagles floated the notion that they would tag and trade Nick Foles. When they realized that no one would trade for a franchise-tagged Nick Foles. The Eagles didn’t tag him. In this case, common sense suggests that the Eagles eventually will take what they can get for Wentz. For now, the Eagles have one obvious suitor. Unless someone joins the Colts at the table, the Eagles will trade Wentz pursuant only to the terms that the Colts will offer. Or the Eagles will keep him. And they’ll live with the consequences of committing that kind of money to a guy who doesn’t want to be there. As to Foles, he could still end up back in Philly. Even if the Bears don’t trade for Wentz, they’ll likely try to move on from Foles. In the end, don’t be shocked if the Eagles ship Wentz to Indy, and bring Foles back to Philadelphia for the third time.

Opinion: What went wrong with Wentz – BGN
So, why am I even writing about this? Who cares why Carson has regressed if he’s going to be traded anyway? Well, for as much as Carson is to blame for his implosion, the front office played their own part in this as well. Howie Roseman’s absurd “quarterback factory” comment has a darker implication that the careers of these young men are little more than “assets” to be developed and potentially traded for a better return. The Eagles stressed emotional intelligence in their coach when they hired Doug and forgot to consider if they needed it in their general manager. But perhaps they have learned their lesson. Perhaps they look back on Carson’s slow-motion mental breakdown and recognize that there were red flags they missed that they need to be on the lookout for in the future. Perhaps when they move forward with Jalen Hurts (or Justin Fields?) they will take extra steps to minimize the role they could play in the potential psychological collapse of their franchise quarterback. Perhaps they will do things differently next time. But I doubt it.

Off Day Debrief #23: SB LV Champion Ronald Jones + Carson Wentz rumor‪s‬ – The SB Nation NFL Show
Rob “Stats” Guerrera (Niners Nation) & Brandon Lee Gowton (Bleeding Green Nation) are joined by Buccaneers RB Ronald Jones! Plus, we dive into the latest rumors involving Eagles’ QB Carson Wentz. Was Antoine Winfield Jr. right to throw the deuces in Tyreek Hill’s face? Did Jones hear any trash talk between Brady and Tyrann Mathieu? Will he guarantee a Buccaneers championship next season? RIP to Marty Schottenheimer, one of the NFL’s most underrated coaches. Carson Wentz vs. the field of available QBs. Patrick Mahomes has surgery on his bum toe.

Report: Colts are the ‘One Obvious Suitor’ for Eagles QB Carson Wentz—as Philadelphia is ‘Losing Leverage’ – Stampede Blue
As noted, that doesn’t mean that Wentz won’t eventually become a Colt, but it will be much more on Indianapolis’ own terms than the reported ridiculous asking price currently being floated around in the league rumor mill. At this point, the Eagles will either have to awkwardly keep Wentz around with big money owed to him—including a $10M roster bonus due on the 3rd day of the new league year, when neither side wants to continue the rocky relationship any longer—or Philly just might have to give into the Colts’ more frugal trade offer to finally move on. It’s a competitive game of tug-of-war, but the Colts currently have all of the leverage.

What’s holding up a Wentz trade? – Windy City Gridiron
The longer this plays out the less leverage the Eagles have, because Wentz is due a roster bonus mid March. There’s likley a top offer in now, but Philly is holding out for more. Insiders all believe a Wentz trade is still inevitable, so at this point it’s about which team will give in first. All things being close to equal, the Eagles would probably want to ship Wentz to the AFC, so the Bears may need to make sure there’s no doubt with what they offer if they truly believe Wentz is their best option at quarterback.

Ranking the eight last-place NFL teams by their chances to go from worst to first in 2021 – PFF
The second surprise came in the form of Carson Wentz’s fall from grace. Wentz had struggled to live up to his near-MVP campaign in 2017 in subsequent seasons, but he still profiled as a middle-of-the-pack option in each of 2018 and 2019. In 2020, however, Wentz opened the year with three straight sub-60.0 PFF grades and continually put the ball in harm’s way. Despite starting just 12 games, Wentz’s 24 turnover-worthy plays were the most in the NFL. All signs now point to his time in Philadelphia coming to an end.

Trading Carson Wentz could go down as one of the greatest personnel blunders in sports history, and some people don’t get it – Inquirer
Therein lies the crux of the matter. Even if everything works out entirely in the Eagles’ favor, it will still work out to nothing less than a travesty. Jeffrey Lurie could spend the rest of his life doing the Scrooge McDuck backstroke through a vault of first-round picks and he will still go down as the man who oversaw the most mismanaged and embarrassing chapter in the history of his organization. Wentz could retire from football with a zero quarterback rating and his legacy would still regard him first as the unwitting whistleblower who exposed the depths of the Eagles’ dysfunction.

The Ringer’s Way-Too-Early 2021 NFL Power Rankings – The Ringer
25. Philadelphia Eagles. I’m just going to assume that the Eagles trade Carson Wentz at some point in the next few weeks or months, and that Jalen Hurts takes over as the presumptive starter. That should help the team’s offense become a little more dynamic, but Philly’s got plenty of other issues to fix. The Eagles are currently projected to come in $49 million over the cap next year (second worst) and may be headed toward some big roster purges and a rebuilding season under new head coach Nick Sirianni.

Eagles free agency primer: ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ for 25 Eagles and 9 targets to watch – The Athletic
Derek Barnett (25) — Wulf: Yes. The Eagles exercised Barnett’s $10.05 million option, but it’s not guaranteed and they can’t afford to carry him with that cap number in 2021. It’s possible they’ll simply release him and clear the full amount from their cap. But a rebuilding team cannot be in the business of letting go of one of its very few starting-caliber young players. I expect the Eagles to sign Barnett to a back-loaded extension that lowers his 2020 cap hit and guarantees an average annual value raise for three or four seasons. — Berman: Yes: It doesn’t make sense to bring back Barnett at the fifth-year option price, but they should give him an extension that lowers his 2021 cap number. He turns 25 in June and is one of the few potential building blocks on the roster. The valuation is still the big question, though.

Quantifying Quarterbacks: Justin Fields – Rotoworld
Justin Fields’ target area chart shows a passer who did not need throws gifted to him. Just 13.39% of his throws were at or behind the line of scrimmage, which would have been lower than every 2020 quarterback except for Joe Burrow. Fields substituted those free throws behind the line of scrimmage for standard quick game concepts from shotgun. In fact, Fields’ 21.73% target rate to the 6-10 yard area is higher than every 2020 QB, coming in about six percentage points higher than last year’s class average. Outs, curls, and slants — all of which are timing-based routes in the 6-10 yard area that want to be thrown right off the top of the drop back — are right in Fields’ wheelhouse as a sharp, accurate passer. While being a high-volume passer to that area is not necessarily sexy, it’s encouraging to see an offense give freedom to their QB to throw those concepts instead of the easier, lower-ceiling screens and RPOs (run-pass options), especially when Fields’ target rates to every section beyond 10 yards is right around average. He was not really skimping out on tougher throws; he was just throwing fewer of the easiest concepts in the playbook. The other number of note here is Fields’ blatant drop rate. At just over 5%, Fields dealt with blatant drops at about 2% of a higher clip than last year’s average. His 5.28% clip would have been worse than everyone in last year’s class besides Jacob Eason, whose receivers at Washington were notorious for the dropsies. To be clear, the Ohio State receiving corps was clearly better than Washington’s and got open far more often, but Fields was putting almost every throw on the money and was let down by his teammates a bit more often than the average QB.

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