Why Does the NFL Think Jalen Hurts Can’t Throw?
“We need to just make Jalen Hurts be a QB,” Titans’ star defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons said about Philadelphia’s signal-caller ahead of Tennessee’s week two matchup with the Eagles.
In Hurts’s first appearance against the Simmons-led defense, during his fantastic 2022 season, he handled business through the air without breaking a sweat. The MVP runner-up threw for 380 yards and 3 touchdowns.
Meanwhile, Simmons left the box score empty, notching zero solo tackles in the December game at Lincoln Financial Field. If his goal was to keep Jalen Hurts in the pocket, he did his job by giving him plenty of time to dice up the secondary.
Similarly, the Kansas City Chiefs forced the Eagles to beat them through the air in Super Bowl LIX. They sold out to stop Saquon Barkley, the season’s Offensive Player of the Year.
Their plan to shut down the run game worked like magic. Barkley was held to a season-worst 2.3 yards per carry. The Chiefs, however, didn’t account for Jalen Hurts’s arm. Hurts efficiently tossed for over two hundred yards and two touchdowns in the blowout victory.
Yesterday afternoon, after the Eagles’ victory over the Titans, my friend’s father asked me where I would rank Jalen Hurts among current NFL quarterbacks. I honestly replied that I rank him sixth.
“I don’t know any rankings that put him at six,” my friend’s father replied. I told him I disagreed with those rankings.
“Also because he’s not that good,” he added.
This interaction took place less than fifteen minutes after Jalen Hurts marched his team down the field for a game-winning drive.
Clearly, something about Jalen Hurts seems to make opponents and analysts alike forget how excellent he’s been at passing so far in his career.
But what is it?
Is it that Jalen Hurts’s passing volume isn’t high enough? You might be told it is, but it’s not—teams playing from behind pass more. The Eagles are 64-29 under Jalen Hurts as a starter. Dialing up plenty of passes late in the fourth quarter while leading is like begging your opponent to get back into the game.
In Hurts’s season where he threw the ball the most, it had nothing to do with the Eagles trusting him to pass more. It was because the Eagles’ defense ranked among the bottom five in the league. Hurts had to throw much more frequently to overcompensate for an atrocious defense. He still led the team to the postseason, as he’s done every year as a starter.
When did winning games become a bad thing?
That “something” is the NFL community’s preconceived notions about Jalen Hurts.
NFL fans and talking heads never thought Hurts would succeed, and they hate to be wrong more than anything.
Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow, Matthew Stafford, Drake Maye, Caleb Williams, Jared Goff, Trevor Lawrence, Justin Herbert, Jordan Love, Jayden Daniels, and Dak Prescott have all met or exceeded expectations.
But none of them has obliterated expectations like Jalen Hurts.
Hurts was a second-round pick who was thrown into the fire for a team that was replacing its franchise quarterback and Super Bowl-winning coach in the same year. They went 4-11-1. Hurts led them to the playoffs the next season.
Hurts was then nearly replaced twice in the 2022 offseason: once by Deshaun Watson and once by Russell Wilson. Both quarterbacks used their no-trade clauses to veto the potential moves. Hurts led the rejected team to the Super Bowl less than a year after.
Hurts and the Eagles were lost at the end of 2023. The Super Bowl hangover hit hard, and the team had little direction after an embarrassing playoff loss in the wild-card round. Hurts took the team on a dominant Super Bowl run one year later.
Hurts has had every chance to fail, yet never has.
It’s easy to find a flaw in a player when all you’re looking for is flaws. Rather than admitting they were just wrong about Jalen Hurts, the NFL community has decided to collectively gaslight themselves into always needing more.
Unfortunately for them, Jalen Hurts has given them more every time they’ve asked.
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Categorized:Eagles