Jalen Hurts’ injury has some Eagles followers freaking out. Is it really time to panic?

Maybe I’m getting old. Well, yes, in the literal sense, the maybe is unnecessary there. Of course I’m getting old. I’m getting older as I type this. I’m 47. My hair is gray. My upper back is sore. I watch MeTV. And I have to admit, I’m older in how I think, in that it’s harder for me to work up the instant outrage that is coin of the realm in sports and news coverage these days. Social media and the 60-second news cycle thin-slice every story until the irrelevant becomes all-consuming, the minuscule becomes grist for hot takes and shoutfests and Twitter smackdowns, and the forest is ignored for the smallest leaf on the shortest twig. Freak out is now the default.

So before Eagles fans set their hair on fire and burn Nick Sirianni and Shane Steichen in effigy and commence with any other pyromaniacal reactions to the news that Jalen Hurts suffered a right shoulder sprain Sunday against the Bears, can we pause for a little context and perspective? Let’s try. I’m not suggesting that Hurts’ injury will have no effect on the Eagles and their chances of winning the Super Bowl or that the injury couldn’t have been avoided. I’m suggesting that sometimes it’s worthwhile to wait, to consider a few circumstances and realities, before panicking.

Much has been made of the Eagles’ play-calling against the Bears, that Sirianni and Steichen set up Hurts to take a pounding by having him run and throw so much and by waiting until the second quarter to get Miles Sanders involved. Given the gusty, near-zero weather at Soldier Field and the Bears’ subpar run defense — they entered the game ranked 24th in the NFL in rushing yards per attempt — it would have made sense for the Eagles to rely on Sanders more than usual. Sirianni acknowledged as much to reporters Tuesday: “I have to give him just some called runs, and Shane and I, that’s our job, just to make sure we get him some called runs so that he can get touches early.”

» READ MORE: Jalen Hurts’ MVP hopes die after Eagles coaches put him at risk too often

But two factors, one intrinsic to Sunday’s game, one a season-long trend, worked against the Eagles’ sticking to such a game plan. The first factor: As bad as the Bears had been against the run this season, they were even worse against the pass. They ranked next-to-last in passing yards per attempt. They ranked last in sacks with 16. And they pressured opposing quarterbacks just 17.5% of the time, the league’s 28th-best mark.

The Eagles would be primed to have Hurts throw early and often against such a defense regardless of the weather, and it doesn’t take much for coaches and play-callers to get caught up in a you-know-that-I-know game against an opponent: The Bears know we like to throw it a lot. But because it’s so cold, they probably think we’re going to run it a lot instead. So we’ll surprise them by having Jalen throw it and run it a lot! As it turned out, Chicago couldn’t cover either A.J. Brown or DeVonta Smith; the two combined for 14 catches and 307 yards.

“We had matchups that we liked on the perimeter,” Sirianni said, “and I think those guys showed that they won those matchups.”

That kind of strategy plays into the second factor: Not for one second this season have the Eagles acted as if protecting Hurts from injury was a particularly high priority for them. They have the best of all worlds in the modern NFL: a young quarterback who is playing like an All-Pro and whose cost-effective rookie contract has allowed the franchise’s player-personnel people to build a terrific roster around him. There’s a clock ticking here, though: The better Hurts plays — and he has been great — the more the Eagles will have to pay him to keep him here for the long term. And the more they have to pay him, the harder it will be to build a terrific team around him, which is all the more reason for them to go all-in with him this season, which is pretty much what they’ve done.

Hurts may be the quarterback of the Eagles’ future. He likely will be. But he’s definitely their quarterback right now, and they are going to wring every drop of excellence out of him while they can and roll the dice that this shoulder sprain is the worst injury that befalls him.

I’m not sure about you, but I’m concerned whether the Eagles can survive and thrive while having to play their backup quarterback. ‘Cause Lord knows that’s never happened before.

» READ MORE: Nick Sirianni on Eagles QB Jalen Hurts: ‘I will not rule him out’ after shoulder injury

OK, let me extract tongue from cheek and remind everyone: From A.J. Feeley to Jeff Garcia to Michael Vick to Mark Sanchez (for a while) to Nick Foles, the Eagles have a history of success with their No. 2 QBs that ought to quell at least some of the worry around Hurts’ potential absence, however long it lasts. If Gardner Minshew beats the Cowboys on Christmas Eve, it will be no more surprising than when Garcia did it on Christmas 2006 or when Sanchez did it on Thanksgiving 2014.

It’s to the Eagles’ credit that they value the backup-quarterback position as highly as they do. The importance they place on it, in fact, is the reason Hurts is on the team at all. The mistake they made in drafting Hurts in 2020 — if that can still be called a mistake — wasn’t in using a second-round pick on a quarterback intended to be an insurance policy. It was in misreading how Carson Wentz would react to such a move.

If Minshew steps in for Hurts and the Eagles keep rolling, doesn’t that imply that Micah Parsons was right?