Only Jalen Hurts can fix the Eagles offense. But he needs the right kind of help.

I don’t know what to make of the Eagles right now. I really don’t. Whatever the reality is, it’s more complicated than people seem to think.

Nick Sirianni just removed an offensive coordinator who has a lifelong personal relationship with his $255 million quarterback. He did so one week after ESPN quoted a source with direct knowledge of Jalen Hurts’ situation who said a “disconnect between the visions of Sirianni, Hurts, and offensive coordinator Brian Johnson has affected the offense’s ability to land on an identity.” He did so after Hurts told reporters that he was planning on fixing the Eagles’ issues alongside Sirianni and Johnson.

Now, one of the three is gone.

None of that is meant to imply any sort of causation. They are just facts. Context. Things to consider. On one hand, Johnson’s dismissal may feel like a gratifyingly simple conclusion. The offense was a problem. The guy in charge of it must go. But things are rarely that simple, especially when a franchise quarterback is involved.

Something needed to change. That much is clear. The Eagles decided that Sirianni wasn’t going to be that something. It obviously wasn’t going to be Hurts. That left Johnson as the only fungible variable.

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

But the Eagles are taking a risk. You didn’t need to see Hurts and Johnson talking in the locker room last week to understand that their relationship is deeper than football. You could hear the deep respect in Hurts’ words any time he talked of his coach.

“He’s going to be a star one day,” Hurts said last February before the Super Bowl. “He’s going to be a big-time head coach one day. Hopefully we can keep him here as long as we possibly can, but nonetheless I’m proud of him and it’s definitely just the beginning for the both of us.”

The big unknown is whether Hurts’ evaluation changed during Johnson’s time as coordinator. Was the disconnect between Sirianni and Hurts, or Hurts and Johnson, or was it one against two?

It’s an important, inescapable question. The Eagles’ competitive future is inextricably linked to Hurts’ progression as a quarterback. They need him to be much better than he was down the stretch, much closer to the guy who looked so unsolvable in their Super Bowl loss to the Chiefs. They need a coaching staff that can get him back to that point.

Chances are, Hurts will need to be a different version of that guy. He will need to be a guy who can adjust protections and execute hot throws and keep his eyes downfield instead of deciding to bail. All season, we saw a quarterback who struggled to do the things that made him great, the things that earned him a massive contract extension and a permanent seat in the Eagles’ board room. He rushed for 70 yards and three touchdowns on 15 carries against the Chiefs last February. Against the Bucs last week, he rushed one time for 5 yards.

It’s not that he was reluctant to make those plays. It’s that he couldn’t. This is the natural progression of a dual-threat quarterback, history shows. Defenses adjust. Hits accumulate. It’s an adapt-or-die league. There is a very good chance Hurts is at that juncture.

The Eagles need something more than a coach who can put Hurts in a position to do the things he needs to do. They need one who can get him to accept that he needs to do them. One of those two things was missing this season. Sirianni and Johnson took a ton of punishment from outside film-watchers. Yet the quarterback is the one who ultimately decides the plays.

Consider one of the more infamous moments in the loss to the Bucs, a third-and-2 play when Dallas Goedert and DeVonta Smith both ran vertical routes to the same patch of field. That wasn’t the coaches, as much as the internet would like to make you believe. After the game, both Goedert and Smith said that Goedert missed a hand signal from Hurts at the line of scrimmage.

» READ MORE: The Eagles’ problems are much bigger than Nick Sirianni

The risk that the Eagles are taking isn’t in firing Johnson but in keeping Sirianni. Johnson was going to be gone either way. Doing it this way makes it look like he is the one getting all the blame. A coach’s political capital comes from both the top and the bottom. He needs the faith of his bosses and the faith of his players. However Hurts feels about Johnson’s firing, however justified Sirianni was in executing it, the next coordinator needs to have the quarterback on board. Which means Sirianni needs him first.

There is no more important dynamic in an NFL organization than the synergy between a coach and his quarterback. Something about that synergy was broken this year. Sirianni and his new coordinator will be responsible for repairing it. Hurts will be the one who determines if it can be fixed.