Jalen Hurts will begin his fourth season as an NFL starting quarterback and Nick Sirianni will begin his fourth season as an NFL head coach with the Philadelphia Eagles on Friday night.
“The guy is a winner,” Sirianni said of Hurts on Sunday. “He’s been a winner his entire life, and he knows how to win, and he goes about that process every day to win better than anybody I’ve ever been around.”
From the start of the 2022 season through the 11th game of the 2023 campaign, Sirianni’s Eagles had a 26-3 record in games started by the former Alabama QB. But in the final seven games of 2023, including a playoff contest, Philadelphia won only once.
That led to changes in Philadelphia, including a new offensive coordinator in Kellen Moore.
“I think we’ve gotten better in all aspects,” Hurts said this week. “I think there are some things that are more glaring that we see that pop out more pointed to the eye, but I think there are a ton of different things that we need to improve on, and I think as a football team, we’ve taken steps in the right direction, and now we have the opportunity to assess where we are, and that’s the exciting part about it.”
The assessment will start when the Eagles open the regular season against the Green Bay Packers at 7:15 p.m. CDT Friday in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Peacock will televise the game.
Hurts has started 56 NFL games, and Jason Kelce has been the Eagles’ starting center in all of them. But Kelce retired this offseason after 13 seasons with Philadelphia, and that has shifted much of the responsibility for offensive-line calls to Hurts.
“I think where we are right now is I’m walking into a year where I have new roles and I have new responsibilities,” Hurts said, “and that’s where we are, and I’m excited for that journey. …
“I’m just going to do my best to do my job on this team and lead in the best way I can. We have a really, really good thing going. We’ve had a really good camp. We’ve built a lot of good momentum, and we want to go out there and play at a high level and continue that.”
Sirianni said Hurts had taken the extra responsibility in stride.
“I see the same Jalen,” Sirianni said, “the guy that is working his butt off to help us win this first game, to work his butt off to make sure this team’s in good position and that he’s playing his best ball because we know we need him to play good football for us to have a chance week in, week out. I think he’s had an outstanding, outstanding training camp and just with everything -- the way he’s played, the way he’s passed, the way he’s led, all those different things. And so that’s what I’ll say: That I just feel like he’s had an unbelievable training camp and that every year that I’ve been here, I’ve felt his desire and will to win. …
“Jalen Hurts is a player that has just continued to evolve as a player year in, year out. If he feels like there’s a part of a game that he has to work on and if we feel like there’s a part of a game, he attacks that thing harder than anybody. It’s really remarkable just the strides that he makes year in and year out.”
