Philadelphia Eagles: At least Jalen Hurts went down swinging

Even Jalen Hurts couldn’t defeat the Philadelphia Eagles’ tank.

Welp, it’s official, after 16 hard-fought weeks of ups and mostly downs, the Philadelphia Eagles just secured ~~a playoff berth~~ the sixth overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft with a 20-14 loss to Washington.

But do you know what? Between you and me, the game was a whole lot more fun to watch than any completely pointless game had any right to be – at least for the first three quarters.

Earning his fourth and final start of the 2020 NFL season, Jalen Hurts led a ragtag bunch of offensive misfits onto the field for 45ish minutes of meaningless football and seemingly willed his team to 14 points seemingly against the best wishes of Doug Pederson, Howie Roseman, and the entire Eagles front office.

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Seriously, in a game where the Eagles could have seemingly put together the most perfectly balanced, ideally paced offense this side of Foxborough, Pederson called a game for the ages, in that he didn’t really call a game to win per se, but also didn’t call a game to outright lose.

It was bizarre.

Travis Fulgham suffered an injury on the Eagles’ first drive, only to come back and catch a bizarre trick play from Greg Ward. Jalen Reagor missed some big catches, then caught an encouraging 15 yarder, only to suffer a concussion that prematurely ended his rookie season. I mean, JJ Arcega-Whiteside led the team in receiving yards at 40; for crying out loud, this wasn’t your usual game.

And on the defensive side of the ball? Things were just as dire.

After losing NRC and Jalen Mills to the COVID-exempt list, the Eagles were forced to play Rudy Ford at cornerback, T.Y. McGill, and *checks notes* Raequan Williams for a ton of snaps at defensive tackle, and Alex ‘120 tackles’ Singleton for pretty much every snap of the game.

But do you know what? If we learned one thing from the contest – other than that Philly fans are straight up gif-fiends on Twitter – it’s that Hurts is going to compete whether he’s down three, 13, or 33.

Seriously, Hurts tried so hard that the Eagles literally pulled him out down three for Nate Sudfeld. How did that go? Well, peep his stat line here, and you tell me.

Now was Hurts perfect? Goodness no. He finished out the game going 7-20 for 72 yards, with an interception and a 44.5 QBR, but those stats don’t really hold up to the eye test. Hurts really did nothing as a passer, but by some miracle, he kept the offense moving, the excitement level high among the piped-in crowd, and scored a pair of touchdowns as a runner.

Hurts tried. I saw it, you saw it, scores of Giants players livid on Twitter saw it as their playoff chances slowly disintegrated like *spoiler alert* Spiderman at the end of Infinity War.

Golden Tate: “Jason Garrett, I don’t feel so good.”

With four full games under his belt, Hurts has completed 77-148 of his passes for 1,061 yards with a 6-3 touchdown-to-interception ratio while also recording 63 carries for 354 rushing yards and three rushing touchdowns (as per Zach Berman). Is that good enough to garner a spot atop the Eagles depth chart in 2021? Is that good enough to trade Carson Wentz out of town after one bad year? Is it enough for the Eagles to 100 percent be out on quarterbacks like Justin Fields and Trey Lance if they are still on the board at six?

Next. What’s Carson Wentz’s trade value?. dark

That’s not for me to answer – not today anyway. All I can say, as a locked-in observer, is that Jalen Hurts played his butt off for the Philadelphia Eagles with Matt Pryor and Brett Toth at offensive tackle, Boston Scott at running back, and JJ Arcega-Whiteside as his WR1 and had to be pulled out of the game to #MaintainTheTank. If that effort doesn’t earn the former second-round pick at least a little respect from even the most bellicose pro-Wentz segment of the fanbase, I don’t know what will.

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