Three New Year’s observations: Jalen Hurts, James Harden, and the Phillies

I’m not sure how much sense it makes to observe New Year’s Day on Jan. 2 as we did this week. That said, I am a big believer in bank holidays. The more the merrier. Or, in this case, the happier. If the federal government wants us to stretch out the holiday, then who am I to argue?

So, without any further justification for what will essentially be a stream-of-consciousness airing of all of the things I did not get a chance to write before the old year ran out, I now present my official list of New Year’s observations.

This is both a cowardly thing to say and the absolute truth. It’s cowardly because you’d need to add a sixth Great Lake in order to water it down any further. Granted, I think it’s OK to be cowardly given the way you barbarians treated Mike Sielski earlier this year when he said what I’m about to say without clearly labeling his emergency exits. As much as I enjoy a good, old-fashioned social media pile on, I enjoy it a lot less when I’m the one gasping for air.

That being said, I’m an honest enough broker to admit that I am probably not being as honest as I could be. At least, not if you define honesty as stating exactly what you think at some exact moment in time. If I were to do that, I would probably say that I still have some doubts about Hurts’ ability to do the things that traditionally need to be done in order to win back-to-back football games against traditional playoff teams in a traditional playoff environment. By “traditional,” I mean well-coached teams with good defenses and good quarterbacks who look nothing like most of these teams that the Eagles have been racking up Madden numbers against.

» READ MORE: What we learned from Eagles-Saints: Jalen Hurts may have to play at less than 100%

(If you really want honesty, at least be honest about that. The Eagles’ non-division schedule has included six of the seven worst scoring defenses in the NFL, and each of the top five. That doesn’t include the Titans, whose defensive backs looked like a bunch of CNN anchors who didn’t get Chris Licht’s memo. Fact is, the Eagles have played one team that ranks in the top 10 in fewest points allowed, and that team is the Cowboys, and Gardner Minshew was the one under center when they racked up 442 yards.)

But again, I’m not going to say any of that. Because the one thing that 2022 made clear is that I don’t know what I’m talking about when it comes to Hurts. The strides that he has made this season as a passer are well beyond what I thought was possible at the NFL level. Josh Allen is the only other quarterback who has done it. Hurts is the MVP. He is an oasis in the NFL’s current quarterback desert.

At the same time, Sielski had a point when he pointed out that the Eagles and 75% of their fan base would have happily swapped Hurts for Russell Wilson or Deshaun Watson last offseason. A big part of that was what we saw in the playoff loss to the Bucs. If you are being honest with yourself, that’s still a mountain we need to see him climb.

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The most Sixers-ish outcome to the 2022-23 season is an Eastern Conference finals berth followed by a complete implosion. Harden has been exactly the player the Sixers need him to be in order to be a team that can beat the Bucks or Celtics in a seven-game series. He’s shooting 39.6% from three-point range since his month on the shelf and has been every bit the brilliant facilitator we saw even when he had no legs last season. Meanwhile, Embiid is averaging a career-high 33.5 points with career-best efficiency.

And yet ...

The Christmas Day Woj bomb about Harden’s potential return to the Rockets was weird even by the Sixers’ lofty standards. As we’ve previously established, I am a coward who doesn’t know anything, so I’m definitely not going to say that the relationship between Embiid and Harden has always struck me as uneasy and potentially fractious. But, thankfully, the Christmas Day report included a conspicuous reference to the pairing as a “work-in-progress.” So, I’m just going to cite the ESPN report and claim ignorance beyond that.

Fact is, if you were to list everything the Sixers needed to be an actual contender, you would list them as exactly that: Harden in his present form, Embiid in his present form, the bench in its present form.

And yet ...

What I know is that the Sixers have the pieces. What I don’t know is whose fault it will be if those pieces don’t become a team. Before the Harden report, I would have defaulted to Rivers. Now, my needle is leaning toward Harden or Embiid.

There are no bold proclamations that begin with ifs. But I will say this: If Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola, Seranthony Domínguez, and José Alvarado are who they were in the first 168 games of 2022, then the Phillies’ floor is 93 wins. If two of them are who they were in the World Series, all bets are off.

Pitching depth is the eternal question. In the absence of it, top-end health is the key. That starts with Wheeler, as we saw in his last two starts (last three, if we’re being honest). Was the end of 2022 the not-uncommon result of an epic grind or a foreshadowing of things to come?

I don’t know.

The one thing I do know about 2023: It will be a year when we find out.

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