The Eagles do many things very well. Among those is their ability to play the media like a pigskin Stradivarius.
Our biggest takeaway from Wednesday’s ESPN report that takes a close look at quarterback Jalen Hurts is this: Why now?
Specifically, why did the story drop at 6:00 a.m. ET on the morning after most of the league left the league meetings in Arizona?
It feels brokered. It feels engineered. The Eagles were willing to give up the goods on the frustrations created by Hurts’s handling of the offense, as long as the story didn’t drop at a time when it would have sparked a feeding frenzy at the NFL’s annual gathering.
The gist of the report is hardly new. Chris Simms has been saying it for years, to the consternation of Eagles fans everywhere. And Derrick Gunn, who has covered the team for decades, pulled back the curtain during the 2025 season regarding Hurts’s reputation for ignoring the plays that are called — and his awareness of his ability to do so, thanks to a contract that makes it very difficult from a cap standpoint to trade him or cut him.
We’ll defer to the full article for the details. Many are technically new, but they don’t feel new. They’re the specific examples of a situation in which the player has power, he’s willing to use it, and no one is able or inclined to push back.
That may now be changing, with the arrival of offensive coordinator Sean Mannion and the offense he’ll be installing. There will be aspects Hurts doesn’t like. Will he be able to continue to resist factors like motion and/or taking snaps from under center?
Will Hurts have the freedom to run whatever play he wants?
The mere fact that the ESPN report exists becomes proof that the Eagles may be on the brink of playing hardball with Hurts. He’s signed through 2028, and after this season the dead-money charge slips to an eye-popping but manageable $67 million, which could be spread over two years with a post-June 1 transaction.
In recent years, several teams have done it. The Broncos with Russell Wilson, the Dolphins with Tua Tagovailoa, and the Cardinals with Kyler Murray.
Wednesday’s article may be a pre-OTA shot across the bow to Hurts that his contract doesn’t translate to lifetime employment, and that if he doesn’t start doing what the Eagles want him to do he may be doing it somewhere else in 2027.
