Is Jalen Hurts the next Patrick Mahomes or the next Lamar Jackson for the Eagles?

Last Sunday afternoon, Patrick Mahomes showed us what the Eagles hope Jalen Hurts becomes.

Last Sunday afternoon, Lamar Jackson showed us what they’re terrified he’s becoming.

The Baltimore Raven tried not to cast it as such, but the AFC championship game was Jackson’s referendum game. It’s as far as he’d ever gotten in the postseason. He played at home. He had the best defense in football on his side and the No. 4 scoring offense in the NFL.

In April, the Ravens signed him to a five-year, $260 million extension, hoping he would win games like this. He did just about everything he could do to lose it. The Ravens scored just 10 points.

About 10 days before Jackson agreed to his deal in April, Hurts got five years and $255 million. In the Eagles’ playoff loss in Tampa, they scored nine points.

Meanwhile, Mahomes, just kept maturing.

He’d won his first playoff road game the week before, at Buffalo, against the No. 4 scoring defense. He won his second playoff road game Sunday, in Baltimore, against the No. 1 scoring defense. He won both games because he realizes that he plays opposite the No. 2 scoring defense — his own, that is.

Throughout the AFC championship game, the Kansas City Chiefs’ sophisticated scheme flummoxed Jackson, the NFL’s most dynamic player and likely its MVP for the second time.

Final score: Chiefs 17, Ravens 10.

Running tally, head-to-head: Mahomes, four wins; Jackson, one.

Jackson is the most dynamic player in the NFL, but Mahomes this season became, without a doubt, the best. This mainly lies in Mahomes’ patience with his offense and his faith in the D.

“Whenever they’re rolling like that, I have to kind of manage my game,” Mahomes said. “That’s stuff that I’ve learned throughout the season — is even if we’re not having the success that I want to have, [if] the defense is rolling, getting stops, let’s just take the safe choice, get the ball out of my hand, don’t turn the ball over, and let’s go win a football game.”

» READ MORE: Jalen Hurts was a different quarterback this season. The big question for the Eagles is why.

Sound familiar, Philly? Didn’t think so.

Hurts has become a “shots” machine. He wants to make the big play every play. He will audible out of conservative answers to obvious blitzes in hopes of breaking the defenses’ backs. This is precisely what the defenses want him to do. They know he overthrows deep balls, hates the middle of the field, and favors A.J. Brown.

If that sounds familiar — a headstrong quarterback who just got paid trying to make hero plays and forcing passes to preferred targets — then you probably lived through the Carson Wentz era.

If anyone has unlocked the formula to decipher the Ravens, it’s Andy Reid and his quarterback. In his five games against Baltimore, Mahomes has thrown 13 touchdown passes and committed two turnovers.

If anyone has unlocked the formula to stifle Jackson, it’s the Chiefs. In his five games against Kansas City, Jackson has thrown five TD passes and committed six turnovers.

Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo last Sunday unveiled the template for muzzling the league’s most dangerous player.

“We sent pressures from everywhere,” said safety Justin Reid. “I blitzed. Corners blitzed. The linebackers blitzed. Blitzes were coming from all different directions.

“And we paired them with zone coverages that make it look like a blitz, but it’s not a blitz.”

Sound familiar? Hurts was blitzed on 38.7% of his drop-backs in 2023 and faced more blitzes as the season progressed.

As a result of the Chiefs’ blitzes, Jackson held on to the ball longer than he had all season. He was confused, gun-shy, and inaccurate. He was blitzed on 41% of his drop-backs and completed just 41% of his passes against the blitz.

Sound familiar?

Jackson finished 20-for-37 for 272 yards and a touchdown, but he threw a horrible end-zone interception from the Chiefs’ 25 and he was sacked four times and lost a fumble on one of them.

“We tried to confuse him, make him hold on to the ball a little bit longer,” Reid said.

Sound familiar? This is what worked for the San Francisco 49ers, Dallas Cowboys, Seattle Seahawks, New York Giants, Arizona Cardinals, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers — the teams that handed the 10-1 Eagles the six losses in their last seven games. The teams that turned Hurts from an MVP favorite with a 94.9 passer rating through 11 games into a pedestrian starter with an 81.4 rating in his last seven.

As they must when they’ve invested more than a quarter of a billion dollars in one unproven player, the Ravens, like the Eagles, claimed to have all possible faith in their young-ish QB. The 27-year-old Jackson, after his sixth season, fell to 2-4 in the postseason. Hurts, 25, after his fourth season, is 2-3.

“There were games, like even though we were in a bad stretch as a team, I thought Jalen was playing really good football,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said.

Jackson’s boss threw similar flowers.

“I told him to stand up tall,” said Ravens coach John Harbaugh, his face sour. “He’s had a great season. His performance today was all heart. He fought. He went out there and gave it everything he had, so I don’t think that’s anything that I’d be disappointed in.”

There’s more to playing quarterback than expending maximum effort, and his teammates know it. They also know he’s their meal ticket.

“So much stuff he gets that he doesn’t deserve,” said linebacker Patrick Queen, who then, quite by accident, hit the nail’s head: “This was his opportunity to be able to write some of that stuff off and move on to the next thing.”

You wonder if Jackson listens to his enablers more than his critics.

“I’m not frustrated at all,” he said, oddly, after the game. “I’m mad.”

» READ MORE: Kellen Moore and Jalen Hurts: Heisman finalists, coaches’ sons, hope for the Eagles

Did he try to do too much, such as throwing into the end zone, into triple-coverage, from the 25-yard line, with just under 7 minutes to play, with two receivers open underneath, trailing by 10 points, to a team that hadn’t scored all second half?

“I don’t think you’re doing too much when you’re trying to win,” Jackson said, with a bit of sneer.

This, of course, is very wrong.

Sometimes, trying too hard to win only ensures that you’re going to lose. Mahomes has figured that out. Jackson hasn’t.

Will Hurts?