5 things the Eagles need to do to unleash Jalen Hurts again

In the first half of the 2023 NFL season, it looked for all the world that the Philadelphia Eagles were headed back to another deep playoff run, and perhaps another Super Bowl. The sting of losing Super Bowl LVII to the Kansas City Chiefs in an agonizingly close fashion (38-35, with the winning field goal coming with eight seconds left in the game) was supposed to push this impressively talented team over the top.

And then, it all fell apart. After a 10-1 start, the Eagles lost seven of their last eight games, including a 32-9 Wild Card thwacking at the hands of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. In the first half of the season, the Eagles ranked seventh in Total DVOA; they fell to 15th in the second half. And while defensive collapse was a factor, the offense was its own specific issue, and more germane to our discussion here. Especially at fault was the passing game, which fell from eighth to 16th in DVOA after Week 9.

Now, with new offensive coordinator Kellen Moore in charge of that ship, the primary football question in Philly is: What can the Eagles do to bring quarterback Jalen Hurts back to the best we saw in the 2022 season? Because especially in that second-half cratering in 2023, Hurts was not the same guy he had been before. From Week 10 through the playoff loss, Hurts completed just 62.3% of his passes (167 of 268) for 1,761 yards (6.6 yards per attempt), nine touchdowns, seven interceptions, and a passer rating of 81.7. From Weeks 1-9, Hurts had completed 68.9% of his passes (210 of 305) for 2,347 yards (7.7 yards per attempt), 15 touchdowns, eight interceptions, and a passer rating of 97.0.

Not the kind of thing that would extend the NFL MVP performances Hurts had surrounding him in the 2022 season, but certainly better at the start.

Moreover, Hurts was less prolific and efficient as a runner. In 2022, he had 199 rushing attempts, which led all NFL quarterbacks. He gained 893 yards on the ground, and scored 18 touchdowns, again the NFL high for quarterbacks. In 2023, he had 163 rushing attempts for 603 yards and 15 touchdowns. Not horrible by any means for any quarterback, but not what it had been. And the Eagles’ decision to eliminate Hurts as a runner as the epicenter of the entire design affected the team in more ways than rushing productivity. In their Super Bowl season, the Eagles had great ways of fooling defenses with atypical calls depending on personnel.

In 2022, Hurts had 120 rushing attempts in 11 personnel (one running back, one tight end, three receivers) for 656 yards and 11 touchdowns. Running that often out of a passing personnel tends to set a defense on edge, especially when the quarterback’s doing it. You tend to not really know what the offense is planning at any given moment.

That didn’t stick in the transfer of power at offensive coordinator from Shane Steichen to Brian Johnson after Steichen became the Indianapolis Colts’ head coach before the 2023 season began. Last season, Hurts ran the ball 96 times in 11 personnel for 488 yards and just four touchdowns. With the pass game and run game more divided, and the QB run game less of a pressure point, Philly had more of a traditional offense.

And that’s where the other problems kicked in.

The Eagles need to make their offense special again

Through Hurts’ time as a starter from 2021 through 2023, the Eagles have made their offensive identity abundantly clear. They’ve always used among the most no-huddle and shotgun (they ranked first in the NFL in 2023 in no-huddle and shotgun rate), and they bank heavily on RPOs – both in the run and the pass game. Head coach Nick Sirianni is not a fan of pre-snap motion at all, and play-action has been a mixed bag.

Under Steichen, it worked well despite the static nature of the offense. But if you reduce the one thing that makes your offense atypical, and everything else is frozen in place, there can be no surprise that things didn’t work as well. Defenses will catch up to you on a no-matter-what basis.

So, what will Kellen Moore do to give Hurts more of a chance?

Pre-snap motion will finally become a factor for Eagles

Sirianni has never been a pre-snap motion advocate, and that’s played out on the field. Which doesn’t make a ton of sense, as the passing game has been consistently explosive with it in effect. Moore is far more about the concept.

“Certainly the shift and motion aspect of it, it probably goes back to how I grew up around the game with my dad being a high school coach, then being in college at Boise State, we kind of used it a lot,” Moore said in May. “It’s always kind of stuck with me. There’s obviously advantages to it.

“There’s some things that you’re trying to gather information for the defense, and there’s other times you’re simply stressing the defense. So I think there’s those two elements. Ultimately you’re trying to build packages and create things so that the run and the action game and the drop-back game [work together]. So, there’s alignment and similarities with the presentations that allows us to stress the defense with those different looks.”

In Moore’s playbook, motion does a lot to create the illusion of complexity – the packages of plays that look the same pre-snap, and become something altogether else once the quarterback has the ball. That was a primary staple in Steichen’s offenses even without motion, so it’s nice to see the overall concept back in effect when it comes to tying it all together.

Beating the blitz will be a priority for Jalen Hurts

One way opponents “figured Jalen Hurts out” in 2023 was an increase in blitzes, especially aggressive blitzes out of Cover-0. Hurts faced by far the most snaps against six or more pass-rushers last season with Cover-0 behind them – 32 dropbacks, and just 10 completions in 29 attempts for 56 yards, 37 air yards, no touchdowns, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 14.6. Only C.J. Stroud had a lower passer rating against Cover-0 blitzes last season. One reason defenses were comfortable doing this is that Hurts is not yet a comfortable “replacement-read” quarterback. He’s not always primed to take advantage of the gaps in coverage left by blitzes. Hurts had just 11 dropbacks against Cover-0 blitzes in 2022, so this is a recent thing, and it will continue until and unless Hurts learns to work around it.

“There’s a lot of different things we can do,” Moore said in May when asked about giving Hurts answers against any kind of pressure. “Just making sure it’s clean, effective. As you build it, you’ve got to continue to evolve so that one week maybe your answer is a certain play, then maybe the next week you’ve got to make the adjustment off of that.

“That’s, I think, the continuous evolution through the season. There’s going to be different challenges each and every week. We’re going to walk into a room and deal with the blitz protection, and we’re going to look at it, and there’s going to be a couple challenges each and every week. That’s what these defenses do. They’re really good. They scheme you up. They give you a lot of challenges.

“So you’re continuing to find, okay, what’s the next tool that we can use? What’s the next tool that we can use? While still keeping it clean for the quarterback so he knows exactly what he needs, and he can handle it accordingly.”

That would be an obvious improvement over what we saw in 2023.

Knowing what Hurts does well – and what still needs work

When the Eagles presented Hurts with more of a traditional offense, and didn’t give him more pre-snap options to work with, it put the pressure on him to operate more efficiently from the pocket. That was a mixed bad last season, as you would expect. Hurts attempted 469 passes from the pocket last season, completing 335 for 3,587 yards, 1,987 air yards, 17 touchdowns, 14 interceptions, and a passer rating of 93.1. That passer rating ranked 23rd among quarterbacks with at least 100 attempts from the pocket, which is not what you want from your franchise guy.

At the same time, Johnson’s offense did Hurts no favors.

Why is this a problem in Hurts’ case? Because he is not yet a consistent full-field reader. He can be late working through his progressions, and a disproportionate number of his negative plays last season came when he was late to throw the ball with anticipation, he made the wrong read, or both. Point guards need offenses with designed openings to make the most of their distributive skills.

Moore has already been meeting with Hurts regarding these issues, and the process of marrying everything good together, while avoiding the things that still need development while they’re still developing, are underway.

“So far, really it’s focused on how he processes the game and just kind of the classroom aspect of it, and we’re beginning the field process of really getting out on the field and being able to do this thing,” Moore said. “I’ve really enjoyed our conversations. I think he’s a really smart player. He has a great feel for this game. The more conversation we have, the more we get to make these adjustments and build off of this thing. Jalen’s one of the premier quarterbacks in this league for a reason. You see it on film previously, but obviously getting on the field now, you’re certainly seeing it.”

Tying together the run game, pass game, and QB runs

Where Hurts was still quite effective, even in 2023, was when he was allowed to move outside the pocket in designed situations – especially in the most crucial situations.

Which all goes back to tying the run game, the pass game, and the QB run game all together. Moore seems to understand that in Hurts, he has an instrument that allows him to do that as most quarterbacks can’t.

“Certainly what Jalen’s done in the run game, there’s a handful of guys that can do this in this league,” Moore said. “It’s certainly a really advantageous thing that we can continue to utilize, and certainly we will.

“It’s a process that I’ve enjoyed, just better learning about how we’ve been able to use him and then exploring some other ways as we continue to grow this thing, how we can continue to build off of that. It’s something that Jalen’s done a phenomenal job with, and we’ll obviously continue to embrace [it].”

Sirianni has already said that he won’t be as involved in Hurts’ development as he was before, which puts it all on Moore to make it work.

“I think he’s done a really nice job adapting to some of the different things that we’re doing,” Sirianni said in June. “There’s different concepts. There’s similar concepts, but in those similar concepts sometimes we’re asking [Hurts] to read it differently than we have in the past. There’s similar things with the way the routes are being run, and there’s some differences of how we’ve run it in the past, as well, that goes with how the play is supposed to be designed.

“I think he’s done a really nice job of handling the things that are similar. I think he’s done a very nice job handling things that are similar but as his job has changed a little bit and done a really nice job of really grinding away to be a master at the offense and all the things that come with it.”

Now, it’s time for Hurts’ coaches to return to form, so Hurts himself can do the very same.