'There is No Ceiling!' Eagles Camp Preview: Jalen Hurts & the QBs

The Philadelphia Eagles have MVP candidate Jalen Hurts at the game's most important position and a veteran backup in Marcus Mariota with significant starting experience.

PHILADELPHIA - Things can change dramatically in the NFL over a calendar year.

This time last year the Philadelphia Eagles were coming off an offseason in which they were shunned by both Russell Wilson and Deshaun Watson on the quarterback market, and then defaulted back to a high-character signal caller the organization really liked in Jalen Hurts.

Those two things might seem to contradict each other but the Eagles believed they were swinging for the fences with Wilson and/or Watson but weren’t interested in singles or doubles believing Hurts was the better option than any potential nominal upgrade on paper to outsiders.

Fast forward 12 months and Hurts blew every expectation out of the water including the Eagles’ own with a spectacular season in which he was the runner-up for NFL MVP to Kansas City superstar Patrick Mahomes.

The Eagles were 16-2 in games Hurts started (14-1 in the regular season and 2-1 in the playoffs) as he earned a record $255 million extension that made him the highest-paid player in the history of professional football, albeit for only four days.

He outplayed Mahomes on the game’s biggest stage, Super Bowl LVII in a heartbreaking 38-35 loss, having one of the best performances a QB has ever had in the championship game.

Typically, the type of life-altering money the Eagles gave Hurts would come with some concerns of changing the person but the Eagles seem non-plussed after handing out the biggest contract in franchise history to their star QB.

“It’s remarkable that somebody can combine the talent that Jalen has, the personal qualities, and the ability at such a young age to be a culture-setter,” owner Jeffrey Lurie said after securing the deal. “... This is the beginning of a career arc for a remarkable person and a remarkable player. The future, we don’t even know. The ceiling? There is no ceiling.

“It’s all there if we continue to surround Jalen.”

For his part, Hurts remains astonishingly grounded with many dubbing him the most mature 24-year-old they've ever met.

“I had a purpose before anyone had an opinion.” is the ethos Hurts subscribes to and his ability to accept hard coaching is likely rooted in being a coach’s son, a background Hurts shares with his coach Nick Sirianni.

“Jalen may be the most coachable person I’ve ever been around in my life,” Sirianni said. “He’s just always looking to get better.”

The fact that Hurts ended with the silver medal both from a personal and team standpoint will only drive him to climb the mountain again.

“You look at all the great teams and great players, it takes a village,” Hurts said. “I know that last year, in my first three years, just playing around the different guys that I’ve been able to play around, we’ve got something special going on.

“We all want to do it for a long time.”

The backup quarterback situation has changed with Gardner Minshew signing with the Indianapolis Colts in free agency and the Eagles bringing in Marcus Mariota, 29, as the veteran No. 2.

Mariota has extensive starting experience in stops with Tennessee, Las Vegas, and Atlanta although he never lived up to the billing as the No. 2 overall pick in the 2015 draft when many Eagles fans dreamt of then-coach Chip Kelly pulling off a massive trade to get into a position to reunite with a player he helped develop into a star at Oregon.

That end game is long gone for Mariota after he was benched by the Falcons late last season but the Honolulu native certainly will not be overwhelmed by the moment if forced into action and Hurts has missed three games due to injury over the past two seasons. 

The concern with Mariota is that he struggles to get the football down the field these days and is more of an intermediate-only thrower at this point of his career.

The developmental job will be a competition between two different styles of quarterbacks. Rookie sixth-round pick Tanner McKee, 23, is a traditional pocket passer at 6-6 and 231 pounds but does not have the movement skills that are en vogue in the modern NFL. Ian Book, 25, was a 2022 waiver pickup from New Orleans and is a better fit for the RPO-driven offense the Eagles will be running with Hurts and/or Mariota.

- Depth Chart: QB1 Jalen Hurts; QB2 Marcus Mariota; QB3 Ian Book; QB4 Tanner McKee

WHAT’S CHANGED Mariota arrives with 74 NFL starts under his belt to replace Minshew as the backup to Hurts while McKee will try to take the developmental job away from Book, who will have his first training camp in Philadelphia.

COACHING Brian Johnson was elevated from quarterback coach to offensive coordinator as the replacement for Shane Steichen, now the head coach in Indianapolis. Johnson has been close to Hurts and his family since the Eagles’ star QB was a child and the two will continue to work hand in hand moving forward.

Former NFL backup Alex Tanney is the new position coach after coming straight off the field with the New York Giants to join Nick Sirianni’s staff. Tanney started as the quality control coach in 2021 before assisting Johnson with the quarterbacks in 2022 and now taking over the room for the 2023 season. 

He’s been consistently earmarked by Sirianni as an excellent young coach on the rise and was once a teammate of Mariota’s when the latter broke in with Tennessee.

It should also be noted that Sirianni himself is an offensive-minded coach who once mentored quarterbacks with the then-San Diego Chargers in 2014-15, Kevin Patullo, the passing game coordinator and associate head coach, was a quarterback in college at South Florida before moving to play some receiver, and senior offensive assistant Marcus Brady set numerous school records as a quarterback at Cal-State Northridge before moving to the CFL for seven seasons.

In other words, there are plenty of sounding boards who understand the position well and have helped Hurts develop.

THE CEILING Hurts was the runner-up to Mahomes in the MVP race in both the regular season and the Super Bowl. The status quo would be more than good enough to keep the Eagles in the championship conversation, especially on the weaker NFC side of the docket. 

What excites the Eagles so much, however, is that Hurts has gotten better in every year of his career dating back to his college days at Alabama and Oklahoma. If that trend continues Philadelphia will be very difficult to deal with offensively again.

“My focus has been turning my weaknesses into my strengths,” Hurts said. “Now somebody is going to ask, what are my weaknesses? That’s for me to know. But, it’s just all about getting better. I think about all the different things last year maybe that I did at a high level and then, to my standards, that I didn’t do at a high level.”

THE LONGSHOT Book was claimed off waivers by the Eagles on Aug. 31 of last year. This will be his first training camp with the team and while most assume that the Eagles will defer to their own draft pick as the QB3 in McKee, Book is a better fit from a traits standpoint to run the Philadelphia offense.

WHO STAYS/GOES Hurts and Mariota are both entrenched at the top of the depth chart with Book trying to hold off McKee to be the QB3. The loser of that could battle could be brought back to the practice squad if they clear waivers but don’t expect the Eagles to play games there.

Last year, the quarterbacks in camp behind Hurts and Minshew and the developmental hopefuls were Reid Sinnett and Carson Strong. 

Neither performed well over the summer, and the Eagles brought in Book after a strong recommendation from Tommy Rees, who was Book's offensive coordinator at Notre Dame. Rees, now the offensive coordinator at Alabama, is very close to Sirianni from their time together with the Chargers.

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-John McMullen contributes Eagles coverage for SI.com's Eagles Today and is the NFL Insider for JAKIB Media. You can listen to John, alongside legendary sports-talk host Jody McDonald every morning from 8-10 on ‘Birds 365,” streaming live on YouTube. John is also the host of his own show "Football 24/7 and a daily contributor to ESPN South Jersey. You can reach him at jmcmullen44@gmail.com or on Twitter @JFMcMullen