The more Jalen Hurts throws the ball the worse it is for the Eagles

ORLANDO, Fla. -- At 8:20 p.m. on Monday night, there were only a few stragglers diligently working in the media room at the Major League Baseball Winter Meetings.

Everyone else had wrapped for the day. It didn't take long to figure out where they were. 

The restaurants and sports bars in the immediate vicinity were packed. All the televisions were tuned into to Monday Night Football - including a few with the Monsters Inc. broadcast, which was especially appropriate considering the meetings are taking place at a Disney World resort hotel. 

So, the hundreds gathered here watched the same thing you all watched back at home - the game that made it crystal clear that the Philadelphia Eagles have a Jalen Hurts problem right now. 

No longer can anyone lean on the fact that he was a Super Bowl MVP. 

That's great and all, and he will always be remembered fondly in Philadelphia for bringing that trophy home. Just like Nick Foles seven years earlier. 

Other quarterbacks have won Super Bowls while not being in the Pantheon of the sport, or even among the best in the game in their era. Trent Dilfer. Brent Johnson. Jeff Hostettler. Doug Williams. Mark Rypien. 

Yes, having a superstar quarterback gives you a better chance to win a championship, or repeated championships, but it's certainly possible to win one with an average quarterback as well. 

Is that what happened to the Eagles last season?

It's certainly seeming like it. 

Hurts had the worst game of his career in the Eagles 22-19 overtime loss to the Los Angeles Chargers. Five turnovers. The first known player to ever have two of them on one play.

Jalen Hurts the first dude to ever turnover the ball twice in one playpic.twitter.com/hQHCOpZ7Bd

— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) December 9, 2025

And while you can't let one game shape an opinion of a player - either positively, or negatively, you can use it as further proof of a concerning trend. 

And the trend is, Hurts can't make the plays he needs to make when he has to throw the ball with volume. 

Oh, sure, he guided his team to a Super Bowl in 2022 without an elite running game, although that was a slightly different offense, built around RPO's where Hurts was a constant threat to run, and no team really could figure out how to stop the scheme at the time.

San Francisco seemed to have a good idea on containment of Hurts at the start of the NFC Championship game that season, but once they were out of quarterbacks, and things started to go sideways, their defense wore down playing so many snaps, and Hurts took advantage.

But then 2023 happened. Teams started to wise up to what exactly Hurts was as a quarterback, and that's why, even at 10-1, things didn't feel right. The offense wasn't consistently good. There were signs that something was off. 

Then, that same 49ers squad came into Philadelphia in December and curb stomped the Eagles, putting out the blueprint to stopping Hurts and the offense. 

It ended with the Eagles losing six of seven, and getting blown out in a playoff game in Tampa. Hurts never seemed right. He was holding on to the ball too long. Yes, he would make some great plays - he has the talent to do it - but it was curbed by his reluctance to take chances through the air, which only led to more mistakes, inconsistency and internal frustration.

In 2024, the season started in similar fashion. An entire offseason wasn't enough for the Eagles coaches to come up with something different for Hurts, and he remained risk averse in the passing game. The Eagles reached the bye, once again on a precipice.

But then an idea was formulated. How can we do something effective that won't take Hurts out of his comfort zone and find success? 

They went old school. It was all Saquon Barkley at that point. Hurts was much better being the second guy in the offense. So much so that he could have earned a nomination for an Academy Award for best supporting actor.  

Hurts has been at his best when he's not been expected to carry the load. He's made some great plays, with both his arm and his legs. But if he's not running the ball that much these days.

When him throwing was the second, or - in the case of the RPO's - the third option, Hurts was on point. He was keeping defenses off balance. The offense had a rhythm to it. But it was all dictated by the running game.

Without the running game being as effective this season, it's exposed the quarterback's warts. 

Jalen Hurts game film is much worse than what you saw on TV..#AchoAnalysis| #FlyEaglesFly pic.twitter.com/RHeka0fQaQ

— Emmanuel Acho (@EmmanuelAcho) December 9, 2025

Hurts' passing games have gotten worse as the season has progressed. He has completed more than 60% of his passes in just one of the five games. 

And his pass attempts have been going up, which is what's making his flaws more prevalent. 

After that 2024 bye, when the Eagles committed to letting Barkley dictate the offense, Hurts threw the ball more than 30 times just once - in a game against Pittsburgh last December. 

This season, he eclipsed 30 passes three times in the first 10 games of the season - a win against the Rams that the Eagles probably should have lost, and then in the back-to-back losses to Denver and the New York Giants. 

Then, in the past three weeks, Hurts has thrown the ball 39 times, 34 times, and 40 times. All of them were losses.

All told, since that loss to the 49ers in December of 2023, Hurts has eclipsed 30 passes in a game 15 times. The Eagles record in those games? 

5-10. 

And Hurts has thrown 18 touchdowns and 13 interceptions in those 15 games, averaging 251 yards through the air. 

Of course, the more you throw the ball, the more likely you are going to throw an interception at some point. That's simple mathematics. But Hurts has made a point to be the kind of quarterback who doesn't turn the ball over. He takes pride in that being a strength. 

But it's turned into a team weakness. So much so that against the Chargers, with Barkley finally having a game where he looked like the 2,000-yard rusher of a season before, Hurts couldn't get back into his comfort zone as a support quarterback. 

Part of that is play-calling, so it's not 100% on Hurts. Why the Eagles got away from Barkley in the second half when he was having such success in the first half is a head-scratcher.

But with the exception of the interception that should have been caught by A.J. Brown, Hurts was mostly inaccurate and missed several open receivers, especially as check down options over the middle.

The point is, he's now caught in between versions of himself. He's not getting the job done when needed, and he's making mistakes that he's not usually prone to making as a result. 

And the Eagles can't make a change. They are too pot-committed to Hurts and his near-$50 million salary.

That's why they have a Jalen Hurts problem. Would Tanner McKee be a better option right now? Possibly. But the Eagles can't afford to find out. They are stuck between a rock and a hard place. 

The rest of the league knows that the odds are in their favor if they force Hurts to beat them through the air. He can - at times - but not with regularity. 

And until that changes, unfortunately, you're going to get more of the same out of the Eagles.