Brian Dawkins Believes in Jalen Hurts, Responds to Howie Roseman Extension

The Hall of Fame safety was at Harrah's Atlantic City to receive the Maxwell Football Club's Legends Award

The Deshaun Watson drama is over.

For the past two years, the specter of the embattled quarterback possibly coming to the Eagles never went away. Now, it can after the Texans dealt him to the Browns, with Cleveland sending their first-round draft pick over the next three years to Houston, along with some other picks.

Bottom line, you won’t see the Browns picking in the first round of the daft until 2025. They better hope Watson lives up to that price tag, which, oh, by the way, guarantees him $230 million over the next five years on a reworked deal.

So, now maybe, the focus can be on Jalen Hurts being the starter in 2022.

Brian Dawkins is.

The Hall of Fame safety who played 13 of his NFL seasons with the Eagles after they drafted him in the second round out of Clemson in 1996 was at Harrah’s Atlantic City on Friday night to receive the 17th annual Maxwell Football Club’s Legends Award.

Before the Maxwell Club Awards dinner, Dawkins and other players answered some questions about the Eagles and other topics.

Dawkins had plenty to say about Hurts.

“Absolutely I saw growth,” he said Dawkins about the Eagles QB's 2021 season. “Obviously for any young player, you’re going to have games that it’s not going to look pretty. Same thing for me as a rookie…

“A professional learns from his mistakes. A good coach points out those things they can get better at then the professional takes that information they lost with and use it the next game to have success with it.

"That’s what hopefully you see from Jalen going forward because he’s a very poised quarterback. He doesn’t get rattled easily that I can see and he’s already been through a lot in his young career at Alabama to have to fight for his job, so I love the fight in him.”

Dawkins pretty much said some of the same things that head coach Nick Sirianni said at the NFL Scouting Combine earlier this month, with Hurts needing more reps to learn to see things better.

“That comes over time,” said Dawkins. “It won’t happen in the first year. There’s a reason Peyton (Manning) threw (28) interceptions his rookie year because he didn’t see stuff. My point is you have to let that young man grow, because you see what he can do, you can see the playmaking ability that he has and you see that he can lead a team, so now you put some right tools around him and put him in positions to have success.

“Then, once he’s more and more comfortable with what he can do, he’ll begin to do things outside, unscripted plays, and when you have those combinations together I believe you’ll have something you can be proud of for years to come.”

Hurts wasn’t the only subject Dawkins addressed.

He was asked for his thoughts on the three-year contract extension GM Howie Roseman received earlier in the week and if it was the right move.

“We’ll see,” Dawkins told reporters. “They did a tremendous job. I would give Nick a whole lot of credit for changing the defensive and offensive strategies. Running the football, being aggressive on defense, blitzing more. I give them a lot of credit.

“Now we’ll find out who you really are this year. To me, we don’t know who they are. Are they the first seven-game team, or the last eight-game team, or are they the playoff team? There’s a whole bunch of inconsistencies there, so we’ll see.”

Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the GM.

Hurts on the other hand?

Dawkins is all in.

Ed Kracz is the publisher of SI.com’s Fan Nation Eagles Today and co-host of the Eagles Unfiltered Podcast. Check out the latest Eagles news at www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles or www.eaglestoday.com and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.