Jalen Hurts could finally meet with Cam Jurgens. They try to huddle weekly. On Thursdays, typically. A quarterback and his center, ensuring they’re on the same page with the game plan. They started doing this last season. Back when Jurgens was just slipping on the shoes of a franchise legend. Back when Hurts was ringless yet impervious to the challenges in his path. This season, as the reigning Super Bowl MVP, Hurts has organized their meetings around two factors — both beyond his control.
First, the damned schedule. The Philadelphia Eagles twice played on a Thursday, twice on a Monday, once on a Friday and Saturday. Their NFC wild-card game against the San Francisco 49ers will be their first consecutive Sunday game since Nov. 23 and their first consecutive home game this season. Playing in prime time is the cost of being champs. So is facing a deluge of division title-winners who spent the offseason concocting new ways to beat them. A main objective when Hurts meets with Jurgens: reviewing what defensive schemes they thought they were going to see, and which they wound up getting.
“We’ve seen so much s———,” Jurgens said.
Care for some plumbing tools? Hurts’ supplier is the second factor: another new offensive system, called by another new offensive coordinator. Since Peyton Manning retired after Super Bowl 50, no title-winning quarterback but Hurts played the following season under a different play caller. Hurts seems doomed to disruption; less Eagle, more Albatross. In June, when a reporter double-checked whether first-time offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo was Hurts’ sixth play caller in six seasons, Hurts said, “I don’t count.”
Those two factors are the only windows needed to see why 2025 has been Hurts’ most challenging season yet. The last decade of title defenses has staged franchise quarterbacks along with their tenured play callers. Pan the cameras to the Eagles’ sideline. There’s Hurts and Patullo recalibrating an inefficient system that belies its talent. The Eagles finished the regular season with a negative total offensive EPA (-2.61) for the first time under coach Nick Sirianni, per TruMedia. Sirianni fired former offensive coordinator Brian Johnson after better production in 2023 (47.19).
Hurts enters the playoffs in the crossfire of perpetual boos from home crowds that chant “Fire Kevin” from their seats. He is a target of the offense’s harshest criticisms — both within the NovaCare Complex and without. He insists he does not hear it. When asked about linebacker Nakobe Dean’s assertion, “If I’m hearing it, then I’m betting that Jalen does, too,” Hurts replied, “He’d be a broke man if he made that bet.” The carousel of coordinators has reinforced Hurts’ indifference to how an offense looks — to fans, to foes, to fence-sitters — so long as the Eagles win.
“He’s always up for it,” wide receiver DeVonta Smith said. “No matter what it is.”
But losing looms. The Eagles have scrabbled at multiple offensive schemes while leveraging the strength of their defense. They play offense without a clear identity. Hurts admitted this way is “not necessarily normal.” But he’s obliged.
The shotgun-oriented Hurts played the most under-center of his career. His pass-oriented games: a perfect passer rating against the Minnesota Vikings; a career-high four interceptions against the Los Angeles Chargers. He’s leaned on Saquon Barkley in wins and losses. Hurts has suggested their arrhythmia produced a “versatile” pool of ideas that makes them “dangerous” in the playoffs.
Such perspective sounds utopian when the boos still echo.
Hurts does not care what it sounds like, either. He stood calmly behind a lectern Wednesday, considering whether their multiplicity in the regular season gives him a vision of how they will win in the playoffs.
“We’re not going to be judged off of how it got done,” Hurts said. “We’re going to be judged off if we did it or not.”
Hurts is healthy for the playoffs.
Fully healthy.
No concussion, as in 2024. No dislocated finger, as in 2023. No shoulder sprain, as in 2022. No ankle sprain, as in 2021.
No nicks or bruises or paper cuts from flipping through his playbook.
“Not here in that situation today,” Hurts said.
The Eagles took measures — both said and unsaid — to keep Hurts healthy.
Sirianni rested Hurts along with 16 other starters in their Week 18 loss to the Washington Commanders. Had the Eagles won, they would have secured the No. 2 seed in the NFC bracket and home-field advantage for the first two rounds. But Sirianni could not have been certain the Detroit Lions would fulfill their required upset of the Chicago Bears.
“One thing I could guarantee was giving (players) rest,” Sirianni said.
Sirianni bent his rules by allowing Smith to surpass 1,000 receiving yards, which took nine plays. The Eagles drew up safe routes for Smith and yanked him immediately after he reached his milestone.
Jalen Hurts’ designed runs and scrambles have been reduced significantly this season compared with last. (Tina MacIntyre-Yee / Imagn Images)
Call it an example of how data suggests the Eagles have managed Hurts’ health on a larger scale. The dual-threat QB’s designed runs and scrambles decreased by nearly 24 percent from last season to this season, and the Eagles ran their infamous Tush Push nine fewer times than they did in 2024. Sirianni, Patullo and Hurts have eschewed outright explanations in favor of verbalizing invitations to read between the lines. Their reluctance to comment acknowledges that featuring fewer designed QB runs in their game plans came at a cost.
A year ago, Hurts’ designed runs and partnership with Barkley in the zone-read game demanded defensive attention that created favorable running lanes for both of them. Barkley set the NFL’s full-season rushing record with 2,504 yards and was named the league’s Offensive Player of the Year. This year, Barkley’s 1,140 yards came more at a slog. His 1.36 average yards before contact are half that of 2024, per TruMedia. Overall, the run game, the cornerstone of the Sirianni era, has regressed to a regime-low 43.5 success rate.
“We’re always thinking about how to protect Jalen and make sure that he is healthy for the long haul,” Sirianni said in December. “Different plans have different reasons of why you run different things. … We will do everything we need to do to help this offense get rolling.”
Translation: The stakes now are elimination. Any guardrails will be removed.
Hurts’ reduced carries did not account for the offense’s entire regression. Each opponent fielded its version of designs tailored to defend what had made the Eagles successful. This created the conditions for Hurts’ biggest in-season transformation of his career.
The 2024 Eagles leveraged their run game to create, pursue and exploit one-on-one man-coverage mismatches with Smith and A.J. Brown. In 2025, opponents played the most zone coverage that Hurts had ever seen. Hurts historically performs better against man coverage (0.15 EPA per dropback) than zone (0.04).
The man-heavy Denver Broncos personified the blueprint in Week 5. They trailed the Eagles 17-3 before shifting almost entirely to playing zone in a second-half comeback in which the Eagles’ passing game stagnated. The Broncos forced Hurts to make heavy-traffic throws in tight windows with a defensive structure that handled a run game that didn’t feature him.
Defenses were setting the terms — not the other way around. And the Eagles, with a lineup of perennial Pro Bowlers accustomed to imposing their will, knew they would see zone-heavy schemes until they found an answer.
“Until we do better with it, absolutely,” Brown said then.
The Eagles’ solution: increase the under-center passing game. Its advantages are documented throughout the history of the conventional NFL offense. Defenses generally must shape themselves to prepare for a downhill rushing attack, and they’re subsequently more susceptible to play-action passes. The mechanics of an under-center quarterback’s dropbacks — typically three steps, five steps or seven steps — also create a natural rhythm that can aid throws in tight windows (although the quarterback must correctly read his progressions).
This required a significant shift for Hurts, a shotgun-oriented quarterback since his days at Channelview High in Texas. As a Heisman Trophy runner-up in 2019 for the University of Oklahoma, Hurts totaled five under-center dropbacks (out of 578 plays). His under-center experience at the University of Alabama was also limited. “No,” Smith, Hurts’ teammate there, said with a grin. “We were spreading the thing out.”
So were the Eagles. Hurts threw 45 under-center passes in his first four seasons. He’s thrown 42 this season. The alignment isn’t altogether new. Last year, former offensive coordinator Kellen Moore increased the offense’s under-center usage (and rostered a fullback) to advance the run game. The passing game was Patullo’s focus; Hurts doubled his under-center pass attempts from 2024. Hurts honed his techniques under the tutelage of respected quarterbacks coach Scot Loeffler, who once worked with Tom Brady, Tim Tebow and Chad Henne. (The Eagles did not make Loeffler available to discuss Hurts’ development.)
The under-center shift began in a Week 7 win over the Vikings. The 4-2 Eagles had just suffered back-to-back losses. Hurts had totaled seven under-center dropbacks in six games. Starting in Minneapolis, where Hurts completed a 79-yard play-action touchdown to Smith, Hurts began a 10-game stretch in which he completed 21 of 36 under-center passes for 342 yards and three touchdowns.
And it has beaten zone. Hurts, from under center, owns a 0.35 EPA per dropback against zone coverage since Week 7 — first among quarterbacks, according to TruMedia.
The under-center uptick has not been a cure-all. The Eagles mixed the approach with their shotgun concepts in their loss to the Chargers. Hurts was notably self-critical of his performance in that game. The zone-heavy Chargers forced Hurts to beat them by throwing over the middle — a region Hurts attacks half as often as his peers — and Hurts was inconsistent. He threw two of his four interceptions over the middle, but fired one of the best throws of his career on a third-and-16 crosser to Smith that eventually led to Hurts’ game-ending interception.
“The ‘we’ — I look at it, it’s ‘I,’” Hurt said afterward. “It starts with me, how I play, how I lead, and my ability to go out there and figure it out.”
His demeanor called back to what he’d said near the start of the 2022 season, before the full weight of Super Bowl expectations were ever upon him:
“I’m able to accept criticism because I am my biggest critic.”
It is unusual to see Hurts schematically uncomfortable, testing his limitations (and sometimes failing) in real time. Trust is a necessity that should not be assumed about a quarterback who has experienced six NFL play callers in six years (and four collegiate ones before that).
Listen to Hurts repeatedly say “I don’t care how it looks,” and you might get the impression he’d agree to running the wishbone on a given week. He would — if it made sense. He is invested when coaches can explain their reasoning (“He wants to have all the answers,” former position coach Doug Nussmeier said last year) and listens when they have strong convictions. That is why Hurts described himself as a sponge both in 2023 and 2024.
“I’m always better for it,” Hurts said recently. “And I’m always confident that I can navigate a way to success, given the opportunity to go out there and try and win championships, get ourselves in the tournament. It’s something that I’m able to grow from every time. That doesn’t make it easy. But it’s something that I can definitely navigate.”
It is why the Eagles believe the concepts they’ve developed can maximize a healthy Hurts in the playoffs.
“That’s just who Jalen is,” Sirianni said. “He’s going to attack every process with great focus, with great energy, with great detail to become the best football player he possibly can. You always admire that from him.”
Cigar smoke curled around fingers. The full breath of an upcoming season hung in the air.
Linebacker Zack Baun said Hurts and a group of other players spoke over stogies together the night before their final preseason game against the New York Jets. It was a chance to kick back, but get to know one another. They talked about life and what motivated them. Why they act the way they act and do the things they do. It carried the sort of holistic curiosity that overtakes Hurts in his conversations with peers about football.
Linebacker Zack Baun was part of a group of players who gathered with Jalen Hurts over cigars to get to know one another better. (Eric Hartline / Imagn Images)
Hurts has been more vocal this season, left tackle Jordan Mailata said. Hurts himself has discussed how “every year is its own year,” which sometimes calls for different “versions of leadership.” Hurts has been in touch with his teammates throughout the most challenging season of his career. He asks how they’re doing. After practice. In the gym. On team plane rides.
“I think he was more open this year to just be around the guys and really have a relationship and connection with them,” Mailata said. “I think every year calls a different version of us as leaders. And I think this year it was in him to feel like he had to be more available. And he was and is.”
Hurts did not draw inward while carrying the weight of having won Super Bowl MVP. He attended the team’s Halloween party (apparently dressed as Morgan Freeman’s “God” in “Bruce Almighty.”) He attended Barkley’s first foundation gala at the Philadelphia Art Museum in November. Both events yielded photos. And all that public commentary that comes with it. His teammates appreciated his presence.
“Being a quarterback in Philadelphia is one of the toughest spots to be in,” tight end Dallas Goedert said. “And he handles it with ease.”
Dean would be a broke man, remember? At the peak season of football fandom — when almost every TV, radio and public space is shouting about the Eagles — just how can Hurts unplug himself from the noise?
“Not the time to be reflecting about that,” Hurts said. “Maybe later.”
The NovaCare Complex offers a natural silo where Hurts’ actions create the loudest echoes. It is where backup running back Tank Bigsby called Hurts “a great teammate, great friend.” Bigsby said Hurts checks up on him daily. Right guard Tyler Steen said the same. After Steen was ejected for fighting with Commanders players, Hurts spoke with Steen while they walked the full length of the sideline to the tunnel. Hurts followed up after the game, too. Steen, a 2023 third-round pick, said Hurts has checked up on him since he was drafted. A phone call. A text. A chat in the hall or at their lockers.
“He does a great job of reaching out and making sure we know that we’re appreciated,” Steen said.
Baun agreed Hurts has a go-to question: Why do you love football? Baun remembers his own answer.
“I love football because it gives me a release, an outlet,” Baun said. “In my day-to-day life, I’m a chill, easygoing guy. And this allows me to get my anger out, my frustrations out. Or give me some frustration at the same time.”
Has Baun ever asked Hurts?
“I don’t know,” Baun considered. “If I have, I don’t remember.”
Hurts disclosed his own answer in the middle of a tangent in late November. Given the nature of the season, it is no surprise.
“Ultimately, it’s about growth,” Hurts said then. “I mean, that’s why we play the game. That’s why I play the game. That’s why I play the position. I play the position to learn. I play the game because I love what it teaches you. And there’s beauty in all of these lessons. And I think all of the lessons that it’s taught us in the past, it’s brought us great success. And so I think lessons to be learned right now, and where we are, we only go forward.”
