The Philadelphia Eagles, led by general manager Howie Roseman, have done everything possible to cement their status as year-to-year Super Bowl contenders. The Eagles’ 2022 season ended with an agonizingly close loss 38-35 to the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII, but that shouldn’t take any of the shine off their team-building, and the development shown by quarterback Jalen Hurts.
On Monday, the Eagles doubled down (and then some) on Hurts’ potential with a contract extension that pretty much broke the Matrix.
🚨 🚨 🚨
The #Eagles and Jalen Hurts agreed to terms on a 5-year, $255M contract extension that makes him the highest-paid player in NFL history, sources tell me and @TomPelissero.@AgentNicoleLynn did the deal, which includes $179.304M in guarantees and a no-trade clause. pic.twitter.com/UNzVumGgoA
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) April 17, 2023
In 2022, his second season as the team’s primary starter, Hurts 364 of 547 passes for 4,280 yards, 25 touchdowns, six interceptions, and a passer rating of 100.8. He also ran 154 times for 901 yards and 18 touchdowns, including three in that Super Bowl. Hurts’ fumble in that game was a negative turning point, but Hurts’ positional opponent, who knows a few things about football, was monumentally impressed.
Patrick Mahomes on Jalen Hurts performance.
“If there was any doubters left — there shouldn’t be now.” #Eagles #FlyEaglesFly #Chiefs #ChiefsKingdom pic.twitter.com/KXonLZ1ihr
— Jeff Kerr (@JeffKerrCBS) February 13, 2023
Per ESPN’s Stats & Info, in that Super Bowl, Hurts put together his second NFL performance in which he threw for at least 300 yards, ran for at least 50 yards, and had three rushing touchdowns.
No other quarterback has done that even once. The other time Hurts did it was against the Chicago Bears in Week 15 of the 2022 season. Then, Hurts completed 22 of 37 passes for 315 yards, no touchdowns, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 64.6 — but he made up for that in a 25-20 Eagles win by running 17 times for 61 yards and three touchdowns.
As a thrower, as a runner, and as the guy who can tie everything together in one of the NFL’s most difficult offenses to stop, Hurts has proven that he’s a franchise quarterback in his own way, and the new contract makes that statement.
Let’s go to the tape and see how he’s done it.
Developing as a pure passer.
Through his time at Alabama and Oklahoma from 2016-2019, and with the Eagles since 2020, 2022 marked the first time since his high school days that Hurts has had the same play-caller two seasons in a row. Of course, since Shane Steichen, his former offensive coordinator, is now the Indianapolis Colts’ head coach, Hurts is in for another switch. Brian Johnson has been promoted to that role, and Johnson and Hurts already have a strong relationship.
“He is relentless,” Johnson said of Hurts upon his promotion. “That’s just the way he is. He’s going to take hard coaching and he’s going to demand excellence not only from me but from everyone around him. He’s never satisfied, and you have to understand that he is his own worst critic. I think that’s what makes him so special. You can never be as hard on him as he is on himself.”
Head coach Nick Sirianni certainly noticed it in-season, as did Hurts’ teammates.
“I think you see that a lot in his reads, because that’s where it’s going to show up the most because you’re running similar plays that he’s been running for two years,” Sirianni said on December 14, when asked about how Hurts had developed over time. “He’s seeing different defenses. He’s going to different places with the football based off of what the defense is doing. One of my favorite plays that he made in the game [against the Giants in Week 14] was a four-yard gain to [WR] Zach Pascal. Well, why? Why would that be your favorite play? Because it was designed to go one place with the ball. We actually got the coverage we thought we were going to get, and it didn’t go there because it was just a little cloudy over there. So he, hey, oh, man, they’re probably in the coverage that we thought we were going to play on this one; I’m going to deliver a ball there, eh, looks cloudy, ball to Zach Pascal for a four-yard gain. That’s a sweet play.
“Those are showing you his growth, his development of that, and that’s a play that we’ve been running for a couple years and that he has a lot of reps on and he knows what it’s supposed to look like; when it’s not looking that way, he moves on. I think that’s a really good example of that, and that’s one of the plays we showed in the team meeting today of just really good quarterback play.”
Another reason Sirianni probably liked this play is that it was a conversion on second-and-1. The Giants were playing Cover-6 (Cover-2 to the boundary and Cover-4 to the field), and as there was 9″40 left in the first quarter, Hurts didn’t have to press for the completion. The idea here was to take the profit, and that’s what he did.
After the Giants game, Eagles cornerback Darius Slay mentioned that he was inspired to switch to receiver so that he could catch passes from Hurts. The catalyst for this was the out route Hurts threw to receiver Quez Watkins with 1:40 left in the first quarter.
“The best throw today was the out route to Quez,” Slay said. “On the blitz, off the back foot… it was a DOT. That’s how you do it in [Madden] 2k. I don’t know if you’ve played 2k, but you throw it to the corner, hit the corner 3 DOT? He hit a DOT today. I was like, I wanna go to receiver because I know [Hurts] can get me the ball anytime now. I’m almost retired from this DB [explative] and I’m going to receiver, because I know I’m going for fityhunred [1,500 yards].
“I’m calling Coach tonight. We having a full conversation tonight. ‘Coach, I wanna be a receiver because I know I’ll get 1,500 yards. In five games.”
Well, here’s the throw that inspired Slay. The Eagles had third-and-4 at their own 15-yard line, the Giants were blitzing (as is their wont under defensive coordinator Wink Martindale), and Hurts handled the cross-dog pressure and the free rush from safety Tony Jefferson as if he was throwing out of 7-on-7..
On December 13, offensive coordinator Shane Steichen pointed to another throw against the Giants which turned his head.
“It was just a great throw by him,” Steichen first said of the Watkins out route. “And then the other one that I thought was awesome was that first third down of the game, the drive to [WR] DeVonta [Smith], the quick out. He threw that ball with such great anticipation and accuracy. The guy was right on his back hip, and he let that thing go before DeVonta broke out, and it hit him right there. That was a huge play in the game.”
It was, and it was also an impressive throw. The Eagles had third-and-6 from the New York 38-yard line with 8:08 left in the first half. The Giants were playing Cover-1, and sending a five-man pressure because Wink Martindale is Wink Martindale. The guy Steichen referred to who was right on Smith’s back hip was cornerback Fabian Moreau, and Hurts zinged the ball to where his receiver could get it, and the defender could not.
Offensive continuity has turned Hurts into the type of quarterback that coaches and teammates can’t stop raving about.
Tearing defenses apart as a runner.
Hurts’ abilities as a runner allow Sirianni and Steichen to tie the run game and the passing game together in some interesting and novel ways. The Eagles are by far the NFL’s most effective team when running out of passing personnel, and this is particularly true when they’re lined up in 11 personnel — one running back, one tight end, and three receivers. They have 279 rushing attempts out of 11 personnel this season for a league-high 1.511 yards, 5.7 yards per carry, and a league-high 16 touchdowns. Hurts has 94 of those carries for 529 yards, 5.6 yards per carry, and a league-high eight touchdowns.
Against the Green Bay Packers in Week 12, Hurts ran 15 times out of 11 for 116 yards, which made him the NFL’s most productive runner out of 11 that week, regardless of position. I would count just four of those runs as quarterback scrambles; the Eagles have a nice package of designed run concepts for their young quarterback.
On this 28-yard Hurts run with 12:09 left in the first quarter, and the Eagles with third-and-6 at the Green Bay 34-yard line, Philly tricky with its pre-snap look. It was a 2×2 set with running back Kenneth Gainwell motioning from the backfield to the flat, and the Packers showing Cover-1 (single-high man) with their response. Gainwell’s motion took Barnes out of the middle of the formation, and against a light box, Hurts knew what was up.
And this 22-yard touchdown run against the Bears on Sunday, Hurts showed what he’s able to do against a defense that decides to blitz. The Bears were playing Cover-0 (man across with no deep safety), and safety Jaquan Brisker blitzed through the right-side A-gap. Hurts hit the “Easy” button, and just ran right through the left-side A-gap, and into open space.
“You’ll see it when we watch it again,” Bears head coach Matt Eberflus said after the game. “We had two guys in the same gap. Safety is supposed to be in the other gap. We should have had that. That’s unfortunate that that happened.”
They should have had that, but it also shows how Hurts can burn you if you make but one mistake. The Chiefs found that out in the Super Bowl, and it almost cost them the game.
Hurts has proven everything he needs to prove.
Maybe the 2023 season is the one in which Hurts picks up his first Super Bowl ring by helping the Eagles to the franchise’s second Lombardi Trophy. Whether that’s case or not, Hurts has proven beyond a doubt that he’s a massively effective quarterback in and for modern offenses.
At the scouting combine, Roseman was asked about how nice it was to be able to build the rest of his team around a second-round quarterback on a rookie deal. Roseman’s answer started in jest, but he went on to illustrate just how important Hurts has become to the organization.
“You want me to get sentimental about how it was before we pay our quarterback? I think it’s the nature of the business. I think the better thing is when you have a quarterback that’s good enough that you want to pay him and that he has a chance to be a great player. Show him what kind of player he’s going to be.
“If you don’t have a quarterback, you’re searching for one, and you can’t win in this league without a great quarterback who plays at a high level. We saw how Jalen played in the Super Bowl, on the biggest stage, and that’s exciting for our team, for our fans, for all of us.”
The Eagles have a quarterback, they don’t have to search for one, and they rewarded that quarterback as he should have been rewarded.
