Without Jalen Hurts, the Eagles learned they can’t be without Jalen Hurts

Here’s how it’s probably going to happen:

As it gets closer to 4:25 p.m. Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field, as it gets closer to kickoff of the Eagles-Giants game — a game that the Eagles need to win to secure the No. 1 seed and home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs, a game that they need to win to restore some confidence in their Super Bowl chances and, if they are being honest, in themselves — the stadium’s public-address announcer will introduce, one by one, the Eagles’ starters on offense.

And then the announcer will introduce Jalen Hurts last, because it will be dramatic for him to introduce Jalen Hurts last. Because Hurts certainly has been the Eagles’ most valuable player this season and arguably has been the NFL’s most valuable player this season and has missed two games with a sprained shoulder.

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Because the Eagles need to win this game and they need Hurts to play in it so they can win it. And because for all the questions that have been asked and hands that have been wrung and souls that have been searched about football’s dangers and demands ever since Damar Hamlin fell to the ground Monday night at Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati, there isn’t much that a football-loving public loves more than a quarterback playing through injury to try to lead his team to victory in a game it needs to win.

And then Jalen Hurts will trot out of the tunnel.

And then what?

It’s rare that an athlete and the team for which he plays are presented with a scenario that Hurts and the Eagles face Sunday. The latter needs the former to save the season. Is that overstating matters? Perhaps a bit, but only a bit. If they lose to the Giants, they will have gone from 13-1 and a championship favorite to, in all likelihood, the fifth seed and a first-round game on the road against … Tom Brady. And if these last two weeks have done nothing else, they have shown the Eagles and those who follow them that Hurts rendered the convention wisdom surrounding the team at the start of the season — that it had a No. 1 quarterback, Hurts, and a No. 1A quarterback, Gardner Minshew — false.

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“The biggest thing,” tight end Dallas Goedert said, “is that we found out who Jalen is and how important he is to this team.”

The Eagles have spent the better part of their last five quarters — the final one against the Cowboys on Christmas Eve, all four against the Saints eight days later — throwing up all over themselves. They’ve been in freefall pretty much since, while holding a seven-point lead with 8:02 to go against Dallas, they surrendered a 52-yard completion from Dak Prescott to T.Y. Hilton on third-and-30. Hurts’ presence wouldn’t have helped Josiah Scott provide adequate over-the-top coverage on Hilton, but it’s safe to say that something, tangible and intangible, was missing from the Eagles in those two games, and the something was Hurts: Hurts the player, Hurts the person.

We’ll get to the player, but let’s deal with the person first. One of the more underrated aspects of Hurts’ terrific season has been his professionalism, his maturity and seriousness. He helps to ground the Eagles, and they need that grounding.

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They have, in Nick Sirianni, a head coach who talks a good game about not getting too high or too low but who doesn’t practice what he preaches: He screamed in joy at fans after beating the team that fired his mentor. He screamed and sprinted up and down the sideline after DeVonta Smith made a breathtaking fourth-down touchdown catch. He seemed to have a dark storm cloud hovering over him during his postgame news conference last week.

They have, too, in Minshew, a backup quarterback whose personality, in so many ways, is the Bizarro version of Hurts’. Minshew is the guy who sounds like a surfer, with his totally awesome vibe and the Dudes and the Hey, mans sprinkled throughout his sentences. Minshew is the guy who looks like he saw Top Gun: Maverick four times, then saw it once more, just for good measure, on the second day it was in theaters. Minshew is the guy who — and yes, he really did this — showed up at the Eagles’ holiday party last month dressed like Bradley Cooper in A Star Is Born: beard, mustache, flowing hair, denim, the works.

Hurts is the guy who rarely smiles in public, especially when he’s talking about football. He’s the guy who, according to A.J. Brown, spent a walk-through this week exhorting his teammates: Come on. Hurry up. Get going. “They’re two different people,” Brown said.

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Their differences, in and of themselves, don’t necessarily make one a better or more effective quarterback than the other, of course. Their performances this season sure have, though, and the Eagles, after the last two weeks, could use the injection of gravity that Hurts brings. They also could use the particular set of skills that he has and that Minshew, like plenty of other quarterbacks around the league, does not.

Shane Steichen, the team’s offensive coordinator, admitted Thursday that he and Sirianni will have to contour their game plan and play-calling to accommodate Hurts and his injured shoulder, to protect him from a big hit and the Giants and even from himself. It’s not in Hurts’ nature to limit himself on the field, though, and you have to wonder how the Eagles can afford to limit him.

Both Steichen and Goedert went on and on about the offense’s inability to “get into a rhythm” against the Saints; the Eagles went three-and-out on their first four possessions. But often, the “rhythm” that the Eagles have generated this season has come down to nothing more than Hurts’ making a play, usually with his legs.

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As just one example, take the season opener against the Detroit Lions. The only thing that stopped the Eagles from punting on their first two possessions that day was a pair of Hurts scrambles, one for 16 yards on third-and-15, one for 10 yards on third-and-6.

“Without a doubt,” Goedert said. “I mean, he’s one of the best off-script quarterbacks. He makes plays where everybody just goes ‘Wow.’ It’s huge. … Losing that hurt us a little bit, but we just all have to be better when he’s not around.”

Not on Sunday. On Sunday, they have to be better with him. And they should be, because of him.