The Stunning Numbers Behind the Immaculate Transformation of Jalen Hurts and His Wizardry of Winning

Silence! Pay no attention to the noise out there surrounding Jalen Hurts and the Eagles’ lamest show on turf aerial attack last Sunday. The great and powerful Wizard of Staz knows why you’re here and understands your concerns heading into the divisional round playoff game between the Eagles and the L.A. Rams this Sunday at the Linc.  I have every intention of answering your questions and addressing your concerns.  So step forward Eagles’ fans.  You want to know what’s wrong with your team’s passing game do you?  Well the great and powerful watched the same game as you did – twice (yes, I know, the Wizard has a thing for self-mutilation).  But before I start handing out diplomas and medals let’s review the good, the bad and the “winning moments” from QB1’s day last Sunday, a 22-10 win over he Packers shall we? 

So Jalen Hurts got off to a quick start completing his first six passes for 39 yards and a touchdown but then went 27 minutes of game time without a completion.  However, lest we forget that when the mallet when down, the knuckles started to turn pale, and the Packers kicked a field goal to cut the Eagles lead to 10-3 late in the 3rd quarter,  Hurts woke up and went 7-8 the rest of the way for 92 yards and a touchdown and led two other drives that resulted in two Jake Elliott field goals to put the game out of reach and send the Packers packing. The final three Eagles’ drives resulted in 12 points and if Saquon Barkley doesn’t slide in the waning moments and takes it to the house, the Eagles would have stamped a 19 point victory and would have scored 29 points, three more than their season average.  Hurts finished 13/21 for 131 yards and two touchdowns and a qb rating of 111.4 but his oh for 7 drought for almost two quarters is what has Eagles Nation out of sorts.

I’m in the minority of the Eagles’ aerial-angst-stricken contingent because as I wrote on Tuesday, every week is a different season in the NFL.  

As gangrenous as the offense looked on Sunday the Eagles beat the Packers going away.  I’ll say it again.  It’s a 60 minute game and at the end of last Sunday’s 60 minutes the Birds put up 22 points and the total would have been 29 had Saquon Barkley not surrendered himself in the final moments.  Hurts hadn’t played in a month and still had post-concussion symptoms for a little more than three weeks of that month so for his first time out in a while he did what he had to do – win the game.

Evidence of Things We’ve Seen

Why am I not too concerned?  Because everybody is stressing out about what happened last week.  Can someone please explain to me what in the Hell last week has to do with next week? We’ve seen this movie before and as of this year so far its always had a happy ending. We’ve also seen offensive coordinator Kellen Moore make adjustments that manifested themselves into a 290 yard and two touchdown performance in a 27-13 win over the Steelers just a week after A.J.-gate, when the Birds’ star receiver complained about the passing game following a lifeless performance against the Carolina Panthers.

Hurts’ numbers certainly aren’t flashy this year but they’re solid and efficient.  He’s thrown 20 touchdowns vs 5 interceptions and added 630 rushing yards and 14 touchdowns on the ground.   But his biggest contribution to his team beating the Packers and advancing to the divisional round was his ball security. No interceptions and no fumbles.  If your keeping score at home Jalen Hurts is only the seventh quarterback in NFL history to throw 140 or more passes over a five-game span in the postseason without an interception. The others are Patrick Mahomes, Joe Montana, Joe Flacco, Drew Brees, Matt Ryan and Jared Goff.  That’s some serios company – nine Lombarbi trophies from that group and counting.

I know it seems like a lifetime ago but once upon a time this Eagles team, just two years removed from a Super Bowl appearance and one year removed from an epic collapse, took their talents to South Florida.  It was a normally hot and ungodly humid day in Tampa in late September as Hurts and the Eagles were humiliated once again by the Bucs, just nine months after being  eliminated by the same Buccaneers in a first round playoff game.  On this day the Birds trailed 24-0 before their offense ran their 10th play.  What’s worse is that Philly was heading into the bye week so they would have an extra week to feel the shame and be reminded of the embarrassment by the sports talk shows, both locally and nationally for the next two weeks.

The Eagles were 2-2 and the quarterback had turned the ball over nine times in those four games, four interceptions and five fumbles and in those games, Hurts’ quarterback rating did not once reach 90. Something needed to change.  

Everything Changes if Everything Changes

And it did because since the first game after the bye, a 20-16 win over the Browns, Hurts’ pass attempts per game went from 33-22 over the next 11 games Hurts would play. His average quarterback rating since the bye week is 105.7 and he’s thrown 14 touchdowns and rushed for another 12.  But the key to Hurts’ and the Eagles’ success since the Tampa game is that Jalen has thrown only one interception in his last 11 games.

Hurts threw four interceptions in his first 107 attempts this year. He’s thrown one interception in his last 275 pass attempts and his immaculate transformation has translated into a prefect 11-0 record in that time in games that he started and finished. Everyone O.K. with that?   

Hurts had this say to the media on Wednesday when asked about the choppy passing game, “I think you guys need to understand that I don’t play the game for anything other than to win. My role in each will be different. The approach in each game is different. …Some things are magnified a little bit more because there’s less opportunities in certain areas, but ultimately, it’s about winning the game. We’re talking about playoff football.”

Hurts added another win to his playoff resume last Sunday.  Only five quarterbacks drafted in the second round have won more playoff games than he has: Brett Favre (13), Drew Brees (9), Ken Stabler (7) and Ron Jaworski and Colin Kaepernick (4). 

Hurts threw four interceptions in his first 107 attempts this year. He’s thrown one pick in his last 275 pass attempts. 

Now I’m not in the quarterback room or team meetings and I don’t like to criticize or speculate about things when I don’t have all of the correct information.  But I’m looking at the same numbers that everyone else has access to.  Prior to the bye the Eagles’ offense didn’t have a rhyme or reason to it.  It seemed like a series of unrelated plays.  But since the bye the Eagles formed an identity and a highly effective winning formula.  Fewer passing attempts by definition  lead to fewer mistakes as  every time you put the ball in the air three things can happen and two of them are bad.  So the coaching staff cut Hurts’ workload by 33% and feeds the NFL’s leading rusher, with a incremental workload as the game goes on.   

But I get the frustration that reverberates throughout Eagles Nation because while Hurts hasn’t lost a game since his workload has been reduced, with the talent that surrounds him it does feel like the offense leaves a lot of meat on the bone most weeks and it has caused some unnecessary high wire acts, which oftentimes results in a chalk outlines. Fortunately the defense has bailed out the offense on numerous occasions this season.

Let it Go, Let it Go

The most curious element to the Jalen Hurts saga is how long he holds onto the ball which often results in either a sack or a throw away or a scramble, all three put the offense behind schedule and it makes it that much harder for the offense to sustain drives.

Currently Hurts has the slowest release time in the NFL at 2.7 seconds.  To put that into perspective the Eagles’ 3rd string quarterback Tanner McKee has a 2.3 release time, and no, in no way am I calling for Tanner McKee to replace Jalen Hurts, although you knew there was going to be a faction of intellectually impaired Birds’ fans who were calling for it after McKee’s performance against the Cowboys and the Giants in the season finale.

But wait it gets worse.  Hurts also leads the league in holding the ball for four seconds or more at a 22.2 percent clip.  That’s about five percentage points more than Buffalo’s Josh Allen and seven percentage points ahead of the Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes.  

But when Hurts holds the ball over four seconds he only throws the ball 20+ yards 2.2% of the time.  That’s about 12 percentage points less than Allen and the Ravens’ Lamar Jackson.  That number is stunning and alarming.  

And when Hurts does hold the ball over four seconds the play results in either a throwaway, a sack or a scramble 41.3% of the time (see alarming).

Credit the offense line for giving Hurts the gift of time but it still begs the question – why does Hurts need that much time?  He needed 6.5 seconds to throw a touchdown pass to Jahan Dotson in the first quarter last Sunday.   

Jalen Hurts is a rhythm quarterback, who is much more efficient when he plays with timing and tempo.  I’d love to see the Birds go no huddle more than they do because when they do the offense looks crisp and and Jalen looks a lot sharper and more decisive perhaps because going tempo is basically running your two minute drill, which usually instills a feeling of urgency and can force you to make quicker decisions because your internal clock becomes your enemy.  Otherwise the offense looks slow, deliberate, incongruent and devoid of emotion.  

In the NFL the team that plays with the most passion and emotion usually comes out on top.  For the fans “playing” with emotion, which is an intuitive feeling that’s distinguished from reasoning, knowledge and logic, is a bad idea because letting emotion play with you will mislead you and suck you into assessing a bad quarter, series or sequence as an apocalyptic foreshadowing of things to come.  That’s not always life in the NFL

The bottom line is this.  Can Hurts and the passing game get better?  Of course it can and it will.  But since defense and the running game both travel well in the NFL playoffs, its probably more important for the passing game to continue to not lose games while playing good enough to win them.  And as we’ve seen many, many times before when the passing game is called upon to step up, Hurts rarely flinches.

So, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Universitartus Committiartum E Pluribus Unum, I hereby confer upon Eagles Nation the honorary degree of ThD.  That’s Doctor of Thinkology.

The great and powerful has spoken.