The One Statistic Kellen Moore Must Improve

Eagles QB Jalen Hurts took a big step backward when it came to processing last season.

Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts (1) throws against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers during the second half of a 2024 NFC wild card game at Raymond James Stadium. / Kim Klement Neitzel-USA TODAY Sports

PHILADELPHIA - In many ways, Kellen Moore’s job as Eagles' offensive coordinator is a massive undertaking.

He’s inherited a perceived All-Star team in which finishing eighth overall and seventh in points per game as situational masters (No. 3 in third-down offense and No. 1 on fourth-down offense) is only good enough to get you demoted and/or fired if your Nick Sirianni, Brian Johnson or Alex Tanney.

You have one football to make A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, Saquon Barkley, and Dallas Goedert happy and a quarterback in Jalen Hurts, who has typically disliked many of your previous offensive staples like motion, throwing underneath and over the middle, or traditional play-action.

Bill Walsh couldn’t accomplish shifting all of that with substantive success so the goal for Moore is the elixir that cures everything in the NFL … winning.

Win and you’ll still get some style-point truthers nipping at your heels but they become less and less relevant the deeper you play into January.

Moore will bring plenty of window dressing to game day because the illusion of complexity is part of his job description and a nod to the forward-facing nature of America’s most popular game.

Eagles OC Kellen Moore / John McMullen/Eagles Today

At the end of the day, public relations isn’t meaningful to the desired outcome, however, and that’s where Moore has to boil things down to the real problems.

And the biggest one is the processing speed of Jalen Hurts, which dropped from the middle of the pack in his MVP-level season of 2022 (2.46 seconds to throw) to a disastrous Justin Fields-level of indecision last season (2.91 seconds).

In fact the only QB slower to make decisions that Hurts last season was Fields, a signal caller one snarky personnel man told SI on Eagles has to be timed with a sundial.

Fix that flaw in Hurts and Moore will be cooking with gas considering the talent he has at his disposal.

The question is why did Hurts regress last season? 

Like everything, it was a confluence of factors. The Eagles’ QB1 is never going to be near the top of the league when it comes to making decisions quickly unless you remove his superpower of off-schedule offense.

That said, it’s also evident Hurts wasn’t always trusting what he saw last season, fell in love with the big play, and too often tried to push things vertically.

Entering Year 5 Hurts had yet to become a full-field processor.

Speeding Hurts up while keeping his strengths as a player in the toolbox is a tall task but one Moore and quarterbacks coach Doug Nussmeier surely understand because both played the position and have taught in for many years.

Teaching Hurts to evolve will be paramount. Forcing him to throw it underneath or getting it out in 2.3 seconds, a number Nussmeier believes in, are fixes from a statistical standpoint but they need to be organic improvements, not mandated rules.   

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