The Philadelphia Eagles should seriously consider trading Jalen Hurts

The Philadelphia Eagles would be fools to not field offers on backup QB Jalen Hurts.

Building off what my coworker Kevin Dickson said last month (The Jalen Hurts experiment needs to end), this Jalen Hurts thing just hasn’t really panned out for the Philadelphia Eagles thus far. The trick plays and two-quarterback sets don’t work, and if we’re being completely honest, they are a bit comical to watch unfold. Hurts has yet to score any NFL points, and he’s already fumbled two snaps.

Sure, Carson Wentz has looked really poor this season, and the cries for him to be benched in favor of Hurts have reached an all-time high. However, Doug Pederson and the Eagles have already showed a fairly strong unwillingness to sit their franchise QB (for better or for worse).

If he’s not here to fill in for Wentz when he’s playing poorly, and if he’s not here to revolutionize the game of football via some sort of wonky 2-QB system, then why exactly is Jalen Hurts in Philadelphia? The Eagles desperately need draft picks and affordable talent, and their rookie backup quarterback might just be one of their only valuable assets at the moment. If Howie Roseman is serious about making this team better in the long run, fielding offers on the former Alabama/Oklahoma shot-caller is one of the best ways to do so.

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Going back to NFL draft night, the decision to select Hurts in the second-round was a super weird one. Wentz had just recently signed a monster $100+ million extension, so there wasn’t exactly a way to easily move off #11 for a rookie QB. On top of that, Hurts wasn’t necessarily viewed very highly during the pre-draft process. Most mocks had him pinned as a third or fourth round talent.

All sorts of theories quickly popped up regarding the Eagles wanting to run some sort of bizarre two-quarterback offense, but that never really stuck either. Doug Pederson and the offensive coaching staff have appeared lukewarm to using Hurts, and even when they do, it’s almost exclusively in vanilla read-option sets.

Now, some people may be quick to point out that Hurts was drafted as “Carson Wentz insurance”, which is the most logical take. Howie Roseman clearly had some reservations regarding Wentz’ future projection (despite him winning the NFC East in 2019), and acquired himself a potentially above average backup in case the team needed one.

However, the main problem with that train of thought is that there’s effectively a 0% chance the team moves off Wentz anytime soon. Even with his current struggles, trading him would result in massive dead cap numbers for the next four seasons. It’s just not realistic.

Pederson wouldn’t bench Wentz after four turnovers against Dallas, I don’t think he’s signing up to trade him away anytime soon either.

Now that we’ve all established that Hurts is serving essentially zero purpose on the Philadelphia Eagles at the moment, salvaging some value on him while they can is the obvious play for the Philly front office. Jimmy Garoppolo is likely done for the year in San Fran, the Patriots’ QB situation is a disaster, and teams like the Jaguars and Colts could use future shot-callers as well.

It’s definitely unlikely, but there’s always a chance a desperate team overpays for a QB on the trade market. We’ve seen it happen before (Sam Bradford to Minnesota, Jimmy Garoppolo to San Francisco).

By moving Hurts prior to Tuesday’s 4PM deadline, Howie Roseman gets to pretend this mess of a draft pick never happened, and the coaching staff can just focus on winning the division with Wentz, as opposed to working on their silly 2-QB sets.