Cam Jurgens, Jordan Mailata seek to uphold Jason Kelce’s standard: ‘We’re trying to build a winning culture’

Part of upholding Kelce's standard is "holding each other accountable." Mailata and Jurgens organized a series of sprints to account for three presnap penalties during Wednesday's practice.

Jordan Mailata (center) has become one of the vocal leaders along the Eagles' offensive line.Read moreMonica Herndon / Staff Photographer

by Olivia Reiner

Published July 26, 2024, 5:00 a.m. ET

At the end of Wednesday’s opening day of training camp practice, Jordan Mailata and Cam Jurgens gathered the offensive linemen to deliver — and receive — a dose of accountability.

The group lined up shoulder-to-shoulder on the sideline of the NovaCare Complex practice field and ran a series of sprints, taking ownership as a group for the three false-start penalties they committed. Mailata, who incurred the first one of practice, said their transgressions were “unacceptable,” hence the self-imposed discipline.

Some of the players weren’t thrilled about the extra session of conditioning, according to the fifth-year starting left tackle. But from Mailata’s perspective, if one player messes up, then everyone messes up.

“We have to have that same mentality of holding each other accountable,” Mailata said. “It’s just simple stuff at the line. Communication. Echoing the cadence. Making sure you’re echoing the calls. That’s the stuff we can control. Some of the guys may not like it, but it’s too damn bad. Again, we’re trying to build a winning culture here.”

That winning culture predates Mailata’s tenure. He refers to those expectations of excellence on the offensive line as the “standard,” which has been set by greats past and present. Jason Kelce helped set that standard throughout his 13-year career with the team with his high level of play and leadership.

While Kelce is no longer a member of the Eagles’ offensive line, his influence is still going strong among his protégés establishing themselves as leaders in the room.

“I think any time we do something like that, it’s just from everything that I learned from Jason,” Mailata said. “Maintaining the standard. When something’s not good enough, we’ve got to correct it. Today, we had no pre-snap penalties, which is great. So, again, it’s always about maintaining the standard, and the standard was there before we even came here.”

Jurgens seeks to uphold that standard as Kelce’s replacement at center this season. He acknowledged that the opportunity to learn from a slew of accomplished veterans over the last two years, including Kelce, Mailata, Lane Johnson, Landon Dickerson, and Isaac Seumalo, helped prepare him for his latest transition.

He started at right guard last season, but Jurgens is well-acquainted with center. He was the starting center at Nebraska for three years before he was drafted by the Eagles in the second round of the 2022 draft as Kelce’s heir apparent. Upon joining the team for his rookie season, Jurgens filled in as the starter in camp and preseason as Kelce recovered from elbow surgery.

Even when he was starting at guard last season, Jurgens would simultaneously think about the calls and protections as if he was the center. Now, Jurgens said he feels prepared to return to that familiar spot.

“It’s a little bit like riding a bike, just we’re blocking 300-pound dudes,” Jurgens said.

Unlike guard, the center is responsible for being the communicator and making sure the offense is on the same page. He already has experience communicating as the center with Jalen Hurts, who was the starting quarterback when Jurgens took over for Kelce in the 2022 training camp.

As Jurgens and Hurts get more comfortable in Kellen Moore’s offense, Jurgens expects the on-field communication to become easier.

“I think we work on that every day,” Jurgens said. “It’s fun getting to meet with him and go through and see what he’s seeing and what I’m seeing and how we want to mesh and who wants to control what and how we can do it together.

“It’s a team, it’s process, and I don’t think anybody’s going to have full control of anything. I think that’s kind of how we want to run. Everybody’s going to have a say. And that’s great.”

That collaborative approach also applies to setting blitz protections, which is the norm for the Eagles, according to Jurgens. Each player between the quarterback and offensive line is responsible for diagnosing part of the defense. Kelce was particularly skilled in that area, and Jurgens said he ultimately eased the burden on his teammates through his added contributions.

Still, the Eagles struggled against the blitz last season. Hurts was blitzed at a higher rate than any other starting quarterback in the league at 40.5% through the regular season and playoffs, according to Pro Football Focus. He completed 63.1% of his passes when blitzed, which ranked 11th among 21 quarterbacks who had at least 143 dropbacks. Hurts also threw eight interceptions when blitzed, the most among that group.

In the wild-card playoff game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers alone, Hurts was blitzed on 69.2% of his dropbacks. More than half of those blitzes resulted in pressure.

“I think we got in too much trouble last year making sure everything’s perfect,” Jurgens said. “When you try to make everything perfect, it’s not always going to be perfect. So if you can make sure that you have answers to a lot of things, whether you’re in a perfect call or you’re in a not-perfect call, then it helps a lot of the things out.”

While Mailata is eager to leave last year’s struggles in the past, he’s being proactive about setting the standard in camp in hopes of a better outcome in 2024.

“We certainly don’t want to feel like we did last year toward the end coming home the first week of the playoffs,” Mailata said. “That’s a [expletive] feeling. We don’t want to do that again. These are the steps that we’re willing to make to make sure that the things that we didn’t control last year that we could control, we get on top of that.”