Nick Sirianni: Jalen Hurts isn’t just a ‘game manager.’ He’s an MVP candidate.
The Eagles quarterback has played well, but he's no MVP this season. He's glad his coach has his back, though, and he's proud his coach is evolving.
The coach pounded the podium once, twice, six times in all. He was preaching, and he wanted his message heard. So Nick Sirianni spent the last 100 seconds of his postgame news conference after Sunday’s 24-19 win at Baltimore campaigning for Jalen Hurts to be the NFL’s Most Valuable Player.
“He was frigging on.” Pounds podium. “He was on with how he managed the game in the fourth quarter.” Pound. “He was on about the runs that he made.” Pound. “He was on in the scrambles he made.” Pound. “He was on in the checks that he made.” Pound. “He was on in the third-down conversions that we hit.” Pound. “And the passes that he hit.” Light pound. Kind of a tap, actually.
Message received. Message rejected. Love the enthusiasm, though.
“I just can’t say enough good things about how Jalen managed that four-minute [offense],” Sirianni said, referencing the Eagles’ final drive: an 11-play possession that began with 6 minutes, 11 seconds to play at the Ravens’ 42, milked 5:08 off the clock, and ended with a 35-yard field goal for a 24-12 lead with 1:03 to play.
Hurts finished the game 11 for 19 with a touchdown and 118 passing yards, the fewest passing yards in his career in any game in which he threw the ball at least 15 times and finished with a passer rating better than 55.8 (he finished at 93.8). He ran for another TD, and he finished with 29 yards on the ground, and he took two sacks, but these are not exactly MVP numbers.
During the Eagles’ post-bye, eight-game winning streak, Hurts’ passer rating is 114.1, but he’s averaging only 21.5 attempts and 195.5 yards per game. The most significant stat: He has just two turnovers and 20 total touchdowns, 10 rushing and 10 passing.
So, he’s game manager, eh, coach?
“That’s all bull—,” Sirianni said. “Jalen played an awesome game. His stats are gonna say [nothing impressive], but that guy made runs when he needed to make runs. He made good checks [to alternative plays]. He managed the game in the four-minute [offense] to take the clock down to use as much time as he can.”
Typically, Hurts didn’t pay the matter much mind.
“Everyone who plays the position is asked to manage the game, to an extent,” he said.
Sirianni noted that, since the Eagles have held leads late in games thanks largely to their defense and running back Saquon Barkley, Hurts hasn’t been able to pad his stats with comeback numbers.
“Saquon deserves to be in the MVP consideration,” Sirianni said.
Agreed.
“Jalen Hurts deserves to be in the MVP consideration because of how clean of football he’s playing,” Sirianni said.
Hurts isn’t interested.
“I appreciate his intentions with it,” he said with a chuckle. “My focus is winning.”
As it should be.
Look, no one has given Hurts more credit regarding his maturation over the past two months than I have, but he’s not an MVP candidate. Not yet, anyway.
A league’s most valuable player should be the league’s best player. Right now, that player is Barkley. He probably won’t win it, since no running back has won it since Adrian Peterson in 2012. It has become a quarterback award, and Buffalo’s Josh Allen, Detroit’s Jared Goff, and Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes all are more likely to win it than Hurts. Allen on Sunday Night Football might have locked up the award when, in a theatrically beautiful Western New York snowstorm, he completed a short pass to Amari Cooper near the goal line, followed Cooper, who was being tackled, and received a lateral from Cooper, then ran the ball in for a touchdown from the 9.
Hurts has no such play in his 2024 catalog.
The general perception regarding Hurts goes like this:
Hurts benefits from the presence of Barkley, the best back in Eagles history; A.J. Brown, the best receiver in Eagles history; DeVonta Smith, the other half of the best receiver duo in Eagles history; and Lane Johnson, Jordan Mailata, and Landon Dickerson, one of the best trios of linemen in Eagles history.
That perception is accurate.
Hurts’ newfound genius lies not in what he can do, but rather in his recognition of what he cannot do. In 2023 and in the first four games of 2024, Hurts had 26 turnovers, the most in the league. He threw careless passes and he didn’t protect the football, usually because he declined to take sacks, too often opting to try to make a heroic play.
No more. He is playing with discretion.
Discretion has its own sort of heroism. Discretion has its own value. Discretion, on its own, does not have MVP value.
Hurts on Sirianni
Asked how Sirianni has contributed to the Eagles’ eight-game winning streak, Hurts was candid.
“He’s been growing. That’s the biggest thing,” he said. “Everyone has to be able to evolve as the season goes on.”
Hmm.
Hurts sparked intrigue about his relationship with Sirianni at the end of minicamp in June when he gave a cryptic nonanswer regarding how the head coach was dealing with having new offensive coordinator Kellen Moore scrap Sirianni’s scheme as Sirianni stepped away from scheme-building, game-planning, and play-calling. Several reports depicted the relationship between the hot seat coach and the $255 million franchise quarterback as frosty or awkward at best. So, any assessment of Sirianni by Hurts now is, to mix metaphors, heard under a microscope.
» READ MORE: Saquon Barkley leads the top 8 reasons Philly sports fans should be thankful
Asked how Sirianni has evolved and grown, Hurts replied:
“You know, his approach. His patience in certain moments.”
In his first three seasons, Sirianni often exploded at players on the field and at practice. He also has had altercations with fans; Colts fans in 2022, Chiefs fans in 2023, and, bizarrely, his own Eagles fans this season, after the Game 5 win that started the current winning streak. Sirianni apologized after taunting Eagles fans and has seemed more reserved and even more focused since.
“He’s had some moments where he wished he’d could’ve done something else,” Hurts said, not specifying whether he meant on the field, off it, or both. “He’s had some moments where we have to help him out.”
Eight straight wins? That’s a lot of help.
Extra points
Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair knocked Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence out of Sunday’s game with a concussion when he delivered a cheap-shot elbow as Lawrence slid to protect himself at the end of a run. The blow prompted a melee. Al-Shaair was ejected and likely will be suspended. … Reinvigorated Russell Wilson outgunned the Bengals, 44-38, as he threw for 414 yards and three TDs. Wilson is 5-1 since becoming the Steelers’ starter and the team has won six of seven. The Steelers visit Philly in two weeks. … The Vikings kept pace with the Eagles at 10-2 thanks to a TD pass from Sam Darnold to Aaron Jones with 1:17 to play for a 23-22 win over the Cardinals. … Don’t think the Bears fired coach Matt Eberflus solely due to the Thanksgiving debacle in which time ran out on their comeback attempt against Detroit even though Eberflus had a timeout left. The team was a disaster, and it was mostly his doing. … Dolphins linebacker Jordyn Brooks admitted after their Thanksgiving loss in frigid Green Bay, where temperatures dropped well below freezing, that the cold weather played a part; the Dolphins missed 20 tackles, according to NextGen Stats.