Is Jalen Hurts pacing himself? The Eagles need him back scrambling.

They aren’t who we thought they were. It’s as simple as that. So is the explanation. Jalen Hurts isn’t doing the things that made him a difference-maker. Darius Slay and Avonte Maddox have been hurt. Chauncey Gardner-Johnson is gone.

Mostly, it’s Hurts. He is not making the explosive plays with his legs that we saw throughout 2022. Those plays consistently make a difference in games.

There’s your grand unified theory of the rise and fall of the 2023 Eagles.

There is no mystery. All of the other noise is just that. Noise. The pouting wide receivers, the demoted defensive coordinator, the horizontal passing scheme, all are second-order effects. They are the symptoms, the second-order effects, the inevitable fallout from a team that thinks it should be better than it is. Teams lose, players get frustrated, coaches get desperate, all of it builds and builds and then blows up in spectacular fashion. That’s how a team goes from 10-1 in Week 12 to wondering whether the season can be saved in Week 18. That’s why the Eagles are where they are now.

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Everyone agrees that Hurts is a difference-maker. When a difference-maker stops making differences, the results look different.

The most telling play of the Eagles’ 35-31 loss to the Cardinals on Sunday came with 2:01 left in the third quarter. Hurts gained 9 yards around right end, and, in doing so, recorded his first rushing attempt of the game. That’s an amazing thing, wholly at odds with who the Eagles have been when they’ve been at their best. Hurts has made huge strides as a passer, both in the pocket and out. But when you look back at some of the Eagles’ biggest wins over the last two seasons, you will consistently see Hurts’ scrambling ability as the decisive factor.

Remember that shootout win over Aaron Rodgers and the Packers at Lambeau Field in 2022? Hurts had runs of 28 and 24 yards on the Eagles’ first touchdown drive. He broke off a 42-yard run to set up their third touchdown. Take any one of those away and maybe a 40-33 win is an overtime loss. Take all three away and the Eagles are almost certainly 13-4 instead of 14-3.

Thing is, each of those runs would have been his longest of this season. Same goes for the 26-yard touchdown against the Vikings in Week 2 of last season. That one came with 1:58 to go in the second quarter and left the Eagles enough time to get the ball back and add a field goal before the half. Those 10 points were the Eagles’ last of the game. Take away that run and maybe you have a 17-7 game in the second half. Maybe Minnesota plays it a little more conservative. Maybe Kirk Cousins doesn’t throw three interceptions in field goal range, two of them in the end zone.

Who knows?

Hurts hasn’t been that player this year. He has been good. Let’s not forget that. He is the primary reason the Eagles’ offense ranks in the top 10 in points and yards. Individually, he ranks among the top 11 passers in yards, yards per attempt, completion percentage, and QBR. But the Eagles didn’t get to the Super Bowl last year because Hurts was merely good. They would not have nearly won it if that was the benchmark.

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Look back at that Super Bowl performance. Hurts was great. He was the best player on a field that he shared with Patrick Mahomes. He was a revelation as a passer. But he was unstoppable because he coupled that with a lethal first step, unparalleled instincts, and an intuitive sense for navigating the field. He had a 10-yard run for a first down on their first touchdown drive. He had runs of 28 and 14 yards to set up his own 4-yard touchdown run to put them up 21-14. He scored on a 2-yard touchdown run to tie the game at 35. Some of his biggest throws came on the run.

Hurts has not been on the run this year. He has 10 fewer carries in 2023 despite playing one more game. When he does run, he doesn’t do it nearly as effectively. Last year, he had 110 carries for 730 yards and a 6.8-yard average in non-short-yardage situations. This year: 107 carries, 547 yards, a 5.1 average. Has has two runs of 20-plus yards compared with seven last year. He has 18 runs of 10-plus yards compared with 26 last year (four of the 26 came in that season-opening shootout win over Detroit).

The big question is why. Hurts’ health is clearly a concern. He clearly isn’t moving as well as he did last year. He had offseason ankle surgery. He had a knee issue earlier this year. Nick Sirianni has consistently stressed a desire for his quarterback to err on the side of caution, most recently in the aftermath of Sunday’s loss.

It’s no coincidence that Hurts’ first run of the game came after the Cardinals had tied things up at 21. The Eagles called his number four more times on that drive, including first and second down in the red zone. They ended up scoring a touchdown. The next possession, Hurts ran the ball on first and 20 and second and 16. He added a 13-yard run on their failed game-winning drive.

“He needs to protect himself at all times,” Sirianni said. “Obviously, he played an unbelievable game. The ball didn’t touch the ground very often. I don’t know what all his stats were, but I know the ball didn’t touch the ground. He was in complete control of the game, and he needs to protect himself in those times.

“He took a hit on one of them earlier, but obviously he’s able to get chunks in the run game. So, we still need to be able to use that. But when it’s time to call it quits, he’s got to do that, and we want him to do that.”

» READ MORE: Eagles-Cardinals takeaways: The defense is broken, and the coaches let Jalen Hurts down

But he isn’t getting those chunks. Not like he did in 2022. It’s the natural course of things, to some extent. Lamar Jackson went from averaging 1,105 rushing yards in his first two seasons to averaging 765 in his next two. In Michael Vick’s first three seasons as Eagles starter, his rushing average dropped from 56.3 to 45.3 to 33.2 yards per game. Donovan McNabb went from 37.4 yards per game through the age of 26 to 13.9 yards for the rest of his career.

It’s hard to say why, precisely. Acute injuries? Accumulated wear and tear? The adapt-or-die nature of NFL coaching? All of it likely plays a part. The best-case scenario is Hurts is pacing himself and will cut loose in the playoffs. The worst-case scenario is he has lost a step that will never return. The most likely scenario is something in the middle. Which would leave Sirianni and the Eagles as the ones needing to adapt.