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

Anybody who thinks Jalen Hurts wasn’t a problem down the stretch should go back and cue up the tape of last year’s Super Bowl. Just the first few drives, even. Watch the guy at quarterback, No. 1 in midnight green. Compare him to the guy you saw on the field over the last couple of months.

Fifth play of the game, second-and-10, Hurts gets to the top of his drop, sees a running lane, and takes off. He has a nice enough pocket. He has a receiver open in the flat. He has a couple more who have yet to make their cuts 10 yards downfield. But he makes a quick decision to tuck the ball and somehow it works: He darts through the middle of the line, shimmies toward the sideline, then tiptoes down the chalk before his momentum carries him out of bounds with an 11-yard gain.

A few plays later, first-and-10 in Chiefs territory, Hurts keeps in a run-pass option fake and scans the field. He backpedals toward his right, plants his foot, and zips a short pass to DeVonta Smith, who ends up taking it for a 23-yard gain.

Early second quarter, third-and-8. Pay attention to this one. The Chiefs line up in a double-A gap blitz look and a free rusher brings immediate pressure from Hurts’ left. He rolls right but finds a lineman containing the edge. With the pressure closing in from his backside, Hurts suddenly pirouettes to his right and reverses field. He rolls to his left, spots Zach Pascal by the sideline, and throws across his body on the run for a 9-yard gain and a first down.

I could go on. We’re still two minutes away from halftime. But you get the point. Or, at least, you get the problem.

The point? I suppose that’s a separate issue. I’m not sure what the point is. I’m not sure why Hurts has spent so much of this season flat on his feet, if not his face. I have some theories. We’ll get to those in a bit. What’s not in doubt is the fact that Hurts was a different player this season. All season. Not just down the stretch.

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The Eagles’ late-season collapse was nothing more than a manifestation of all of the issues that we’d seen throughout their 10-1 start. I think that’s why the playoffs arrived with such a sense of impending doom. Eagles fans can talk themselves into believing in anything. Just give them some unknown that could break right. Bobby Hoying, Greg Ward, the Georgia defense. But there was nothing unknown about this team by the time wild-card weekend arrived.

The Eagles should have lost to the Patriots. They could have lost to the Vikings. They needed 80 yards of penalties and some brutal game management to beat the Bills in overtime. Hell, they needed overtime to beat the Commanders. This wasn’t just fans who saw the issues. The Eagles demoted their defensive coordinator when they were 10-3. By Week 15, Nick Sirianni looked like Ray Liotta at the end of Goodfellas.

Hurts wasn’t the only issue. He wasn’t the most glaring issue. But he was an issue. And when the quarterback is an issue, he is, de facto, the biggest issue.

That night against the Chiefs, Hurts looked like he was operating in a different universe than the 11 guys on defense. He was listening to his podcasts at 2.0x speed, a world champion featherweight, bouncing around State Farm Stadium’s field like Mayweather in the ring. Go back and watch. It is clear as day. Watch a five-minute highlight film from the Super Bowl and then think about what you saw against the Bucs. Two weeks after waiting until the second half to log his first rushing attempt, Hurts had one carry for 5 yards in the Eagles’ playoff loss to Tampa Bay. Baker Mayfield had two for 16!

Baker Mayfield!

» READ MORE: The Eagles want Nick Sirianni to have a plan. But do they have one?

But this isn’t about scrambling. The scrambling is simply the most obvious manifestation of whatever is different with Hurts. Last year, he had bounce in his step. He was constantly on the attack. He was decisive. Lethally decisive.

Was he hurt? Physically compromised? Perhaps. That was my first thought way back in the season opener against the Patriots, when he came out of the gates like he was running in mud. I looked back at some of my Twitter observations from that game to make sure I wasn’t superimposing memories:

Funny thing, actually. While searching for those tweets (I refuse to call them X’s), I came across a bunch I’d written during the 2021 season. I’m not going to share them here, for the sake of my own sanity. To use the Twitter parlance, they did not age well. I wrote that he doesn’t see the field well enough. I wrote that he doesn’t have the arm strength to make the throws a franchise quarterback needs to make. I wrote that he would be a great backup. Obviously, I was wrong.

I’m acknowledging all of this because I want to make a couple of things clear. One, I’m not suggesting Hurts deserves the lion’s share of the blame for the wreckage of the Eagles’ season. Two, he has a habit of rising to the challenge. The Eagles are very fortunate they didn’t end up trading him for Russell Wilson or Deshaun Watson. He is unquestionably one of the top 10 quarterbacks in the game. He remains this organization’s lifeline.

» READ MORE: Inside the makeup of Jalen Hurts: Overly stoic leader or just quiet and misunderstood?

But Hurts likes to talk about accountability. I’m simply following in his footsteps. The Eagles got to the doorstep of a Super Bowl title because of him, and only him. If he’d played as well as he did last year, they easily could have gotten there again. He didn’t. That makes him the biggest unknown of the Eagles’ offseason.

The best-case scenario is that Hurts was hurt, acutely so. The ankle, the knee, all they need is a long offseason. The worst-case scenario is that the damage has accumulated, or that new ones will always be there. Couple that with the NFL’s improved understanding of how to guard against his running ability, and Hurts’ discomfort with the player he needs to be.

We’ll find out. Right now, the coaches are catching all the shrapnel. Maybe it is deserved. Maybe the onus is on the owner and general manager to build a defense that lessens the need to live and die on Hurts’ dynamism. At the end of the day, the quarterbacks make the big money. There’s a big reason for that.