NFC East Check: Do Eagles Have a Quarterback Issues of Their Own?

Jalen Hurts is locked in as the Eagles starting quarterback, but a pair of instances last year raised questions about whether his teammates have his back.

New York Giants linebacker Bobby Okereke (58) goes after Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts (1) just before sacking him in the second quarter, Sunday, January 7, 2024. / Kevin R. Wexler / USA TODAY NETWORK

The New York Giants’ quarterback questions have dominated the headlines in the NFC East this off-season as the team awaits whether starter Daniel Jones will be healthy enough to play this year and if so, will he actually look more like the quarterback we saw in 2022 versus the one we saw in 2023.

But there’s another NFC East team that has some questions about its quarterback, albeit a different set. That would be the Philadelphia Eagles, who, although committed to Jalen Hurts as their starter, need to see more from him, according to Jimmy Kempski of the PhillyVoice. 

“After the first three months of the 2023 season, [Jalen] Hurts was the MVP favorite,” Kempski said in his article 10 reasons the Eagles will be a dumpster fire this season.  

“However, his individual performances from December on were not acceptable for a player on a $255 million contract, and he was the leader of a team that could not find its way out of a downward spiral.” 

Kempski noted the Eagles had fallen apart at the end of last season, losing five of their last six games before making an early exit in the Wild Card round of the playoffs. He pointed to two specific instances regarding Hurts that emphasized the most significant differences between last season and the Eagles’ Super Bowl run the previous season.

“The Eagles stopped playing for each other at some point last season, and there were examples galore in the playoff game against the Bucs,” Kempski said. “After Lavonte David laid a helmet-to-helmet shot on Hurts, none of Hurts' teammates did anything about it. 

“Similarly, against the Giants the previous week, linebacker Bobby Okereke jumped over the line of scrimmage on a play that was whistled dead and made egregious contact with Hurts that should have drawn the ire of his teammates, and, again, nothing.”

Again, the Eagles' quarterback situation is currently more stable than that of the Giants, but Kempski does raise an interesting question about whether the Eagles had their teammate’s back just one season after he led them to a Super Bowl berth. 

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