Mike Sielski: Jalen Hurts and context, Nick Sirianni and calmness, and other self-evident Eagles truths

Mike Sielski, The Philadelphia Inquirer on Oct 30, 2024

Published in Football

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PHILADELPHIA — Sunday in Cincinnati was a prove-it game for the Eagles, and they spent the afternoon proving it. Their 37-17 victory over the Bengals was, top to bottom, their most impressive win since the 2022 season, and it revealed and reaffirmed a few truths about them and about the NFL this season.

Truth No. 1: The conditions around a quarterback matter. Big time.

I get it. As Chandler Bing would say, could you BE any more obvious in your analysis? Probably not, but let's pull on this thread some.

It's no coincidence that the Eagles had their most complete performance since their most recent Super Bowl season on the same day that Jalen Hurts had maybe his most complete performance since Super Bowl LVII. He completed 16 of his 20 passes for 236 yards, hit DeVonta Smith on a gorgeous deep ball for a 45-yard touchdown, connected with A.J. Brown and other receivers over the middle of the field — a longtime weakness of his — rushed for three scores, and for the third straight game was turnover-free. For at least a week, Hurts quelled the suggestion that he was nothing more than a game manager whom the Eagles are paying more than a quarter of a billion dollars.

Of course, it also doesn't seem a coincidence that the three games this season in which Hurts has compiled his highest passer ratings are his last three games — all of them with Brown, who returned from a hamstring injury after the Eagles' bye week. The reason for the public frustration over Hurts' scattershot play over the Eagles' first four games wasn't just that he was turning the ball over a lot. It was the understanding that, with Brown, Smith, Saquon Barkley, Dallas Goedert, and an elite offensive line around him, a quarterback only had to minimize his mistakes for the Eagles offense to be productive, and Hurts was struggling to do that. Good on him for correcting the problem ... so far.

The point here is that, for all the scouting work, draft capital, and salary-cap space that teams spend in trying to find a franchise quarterback, success at the position still comes down to a melding of two factors: talent and surroundings. Take the 10 quarterbacks who this season have the highest passer ratings and have played all of their teams' games. Nine of them were first-round picks. (Hurts is the only one who wasn't.) Of those nine, eight were top-seven picks. Of those eight, four were the first overall picks in their draft classes. Those basic data speak to the talent part.

Here's the surroundings part: Jared Goff is playing for his second team. Sam Darnold is playing for his fourth. So is Baker Mayfield. Jayden Daniels has been wondrous in Washington, but having a smart play-caller, Kliff Kingsbury, has been a huge benefit to him. The Buffalo Bills, over the last seven years, have molded Josh Allen from a Wild Thing-style fastballer to a QB who has thrown just one interception this season. Joe Burrow might be the NFL's second-best quarterback, but the Bengals, having failed to equip him with a decent defense or offensive line, are 3-5. And nowhere among those 10 is the league's greatest quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, whose passer rating (84.9) ranks 22nd and whose team is unbeaten largely because of its outstanding defense.

Evaluate Hurts within that same context. He needs some help. Guess what? Pretty much every quarterback does.

Truth No. 2: Don't count on rookies to be outstanding immediately. Just be grateful when they are.

It's no exaggeration to say that the complexion of the NFC East has been changed, and pretty radically at that, by a few first-year players.

Daniels is the easy example: his 71.8% completion rate, his 104.3 passer rating, his game-winning Hail Mary on Sunday against the Chicago Bears, the Commanders' 6-2 record. And those numbers, as gaudy as they are, don't capture the impact that he is having and could yet have. If he completes this rise toward stardom, he can awaken a dormant franchise — one that used to be one of the NFL's crown jewels. The league doesn't have to expand to London or South America if it gets Washington back.

The two next-best examples might be the Eagles' Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean, both of whom have solidified the team's secondary. Mitchell has not allowed a touchdown this season, and entering the Bengals game, opposing quarterbacks had a miserable 70.6 passer rating when targeting the receivers he was covering. DeJean, meanwhile, has been a substantial upgrade over Avonte Maddox as the team's slot cornerback, making a terrific play to cut down Ja'Marr Chase on a key fourth-down attempt Sunday.

"These guys have given us confidence in them since the day they got here," Nick Sirianni said Monday. "It's not a surprise to us because we see it every day in practice. ... The moment is not too big for them."

Truth No. 3: That coach who gave that quote in the previous paragraph has calmed down some. And the Eagles have been better for it.

Sirianni had his memorable sideline tête-à-tête with some fans at Lincoln Financial Field on Oct. 13. Since then, his public demeanor has been more subdued, and the Eagles have won twice, in crisp, businesslike fashion, by a combined score of 65-20. Hmmm.