As a passer only, Jalen Hurts’ rankings make some sense

Jalen Hurts is one of the most perplexingly great players in the NFL and, perhaps, Eagles history.

He has won a Super Bowl, played in two of them, and was the best player on the field in both. He is 56-22 in the regular season as a starter. He has been to three Pro Bowls and was MVP runner-up in 2022.

And yet, the football world, including all of us in Philadelphia, don’t quite seem to able to put our finger on just how good he is.

This off-season, two sets of rankings have generated a lot of conversation. The first was ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler’s survey of NFL executives, coaches and front office personnel who collectively rated Hurts as the 17th-best quarterback in the NFL. This week, as the NFL Network runs through its list of the top-100 players in the NFL, Hurts became the first Eagle to appear on the list, at No. 56 overall.

Last year, following a Super Bowl victory in which he was named the game’s MPV, he was No. 19. The year before, he was No. 15 and, following his incredible performance in a losing effort in Super Bowl 57, he was the third-best player in the entire league.

That’s not a great trend, but he may also be one of the hardest player to get a handle on in the NFL.

Jalen Hurts has never been the QB with the golden arm.

His incredible success during his five years as the Philadelphia Eagles starter has always rested on his abilities as a dual-threat, plus-one in the running game, a skill that has always masked his limitations as a passer.

And that’s all fine. It’s good that, if you’re not a prototypical NFL passer that you compensate for it in some other way. Hurts has always compensated by being a great runner.

Last season, he stopped doing that.

In 16 starts he ran for only 421 yards, a drop of 209 yards from 2024, and a decrease of 363 yards from his all-time high of 784 yards rushing in ‘21. His success rate as a runner fell to 50.5% a year ago, down from 55.3% in ‘24 and 61.1% in 2023. He averaged just 26.3 yards per game on the ground, far below his 42.0 average in 2024. In his first two full seasons, he averaged more than 50 yards a game rushing.

As a pure passer, Hurts has generally been a middling QB. Below are Hurts’ numbers over the last four seasons in terms of QB rating, passing yards, passing touchdowns, interception percentage and passing success rate.

It’s fair to note Hurts has only once had the same offensive coordinator for two seasons in a row and, in that second season with Shane Steichen calling the shots, he had his best overall year. But Brian Johnson and Kevin Patullo were ill-suited for the job and had to be replaced.

Now, Hurts once again begins a season with a new offensive coordinator, and yet another first-time play caller, in Sean Mannion.

Mannion’s offense is expected to place Hurts under center more frequently and will largely move away from the all-shotgun, all-the-time, RPO offensive “scheme” that Hurts has played in during his first five seasons. It’s likely Mannion’s new offense will ask Hurts to run less, something Hurts appeared to be trending towards a season ago, anyway.

If the running game is going to be less a feature of Hurts’ overall portfolio, his historical numbers as a passer accurately reflect some of the rankings we’ve seen this off-season. He has simply not shown that he can lead a pass-first offense yet.

But “yet” is the key word. When Hurts has had a coordinator who could scheme up open receivers and give him places to throw the football, he’s thrived. This may be exactly the change he needs at this stage of his career.

We simply have no idea what the 2026 Eagles offense is going to look like, or how Hurts will perform in it. It is one of the greatest unanswered questions in the NFL heading into the season. Based off last year’s performance, it’s fair to be skeptical of him being one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL right now (although ranking him 17th is wildly dumb).

If he’s not going to run, he must improve notably as a passer.

And Mannion has to help him get there.