Philadelphia Eagles: Jalen Hurts is Jeffrey Lurie’s path of least resistance

Whether you like Jalen Hurts, hate Jalen Hurts, or consider yourself Jalen-curious, you have to admit he’s sort of the Philadelphia Eagles‘ franchise quarterback by default until further notice because he is quite literally the only quarterback the team has under contract heading into the 2021 NFL calendar year.

While the Birds will definitely, certainly, 100 percent sign/draft/trade for at least one more quarterback to compete with Hurts moving forward, as no team has even gone into the regular season with only one quarterback under contract in modern NFL history, how they choose to address the position moving forward will be incredibly telling.

Will Howie Roseman opt to target a quarterback with starting experience like Tyrod Taylor or Jacoby Brissett to give Hurts a run for his money? Or will he instead sign a career-backup like Sean Mannion or our old pal Matt Barkley? Could they land a blue-chip QB prospect like Justin Fields, Trey Lance, or even Mac Jones with the sixth overall pick in the NFL Draft? Or is Roseman more interested in landing a developmental player like Filippe Franks, Davis Mills, and KJ Costello, who may never become an NFL-esque starter?

Well, if recent reports are to be believed, Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie has a preference for how he’d like his franchise to approach the league’s most important position moving forward, and needless to say, it’s generating a ton of takes across the board.

Building around Jalen Hurts is the Philadelphia Eagles’ path of least resistance.

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By most evaluations, there are two “franchise-caliber quarterbacks” available atop the 2021 NFL Draft, Trevor Lawrence, and Zach Wilson.

If you’re a team with a big ole’ question mark at the game’s most important position, you’d certainly love to walk away from draft weekend with one of those two signal-callers under contract and forge forward with a promising QB to build around long-term. But if you don’t, for one reason or another, you’ll be betting that whichever quarterback you have rated highest left on the board can overcome their warts and develop into the next Andy Dalton or Tyrod Taylor as opposed to the next Christian Ponder, Jake Locker, or Ryan Mallett.

Sidebar: Can you believe that Tyrod Taylor, the penultimate quarterback selected in the 2011 NFL Draft, has had a better career than every other signal-caller in his class outside of Cam Newton and potentially Colin Kaepernick? When they say the NFL draft is a crapshoot, they aren’t kidding.

But, dare I ask, what do you do when you have a team that isn’t particularly good, isn’t particularly cheap, or particularly young? Well, if you’re the Philadelphia Eagles, a team with holes all over their roster and very few proven young talents, you use the 2021 NFL Draft as an opportunity to procure as much talent as possible to see what you have in 2019 second-round quarterback Jalen Hurts.

At least, that would appear to be the strategy that team owner Jeffrey Lurie would like to go with this offseason, according to a great piece by ESPN’s Tim McManus.

You see, after effectively falling in love with Hurts during the pre-draft process in 2020 – a fact made evident by his decision to draft the OklaBama QB in the second round despite having Carson Wentz under contract – and giving the okay to switch quarterbacks in the final frame of the regular season, Lurie has reportedly given his front office the mandate to fill out the quarterback’s room with supplementary players in order to “determine whether he is the answer moving forward.”

Now some have questioned this call from the man upstairs, including McManus in a report two days later, as it’s just another example of Lurie getting a tad too hands-on with the player side of football operations, but, pray tell, what else would you have him do?

You see, the Eagles are a bad team now and will be a bad team for the foreseeable future. Even if they could trade up with the Jaguars and/or Jets, which probably isn’t possible, but who really knows, one has to wonder if the team would be willing to risk giving up one, two, maybe even three top-10 picks when the roster isn’t even close to ready to compete for Lombardi Trophies long-term.

Chris Simms called the Eagles “the biggest rebuild in football,” and that process becomes a whole lot harder when you’re lacking multiple first-round picks and lack a proven history of consistently landing gems late in the draft.

That leaves prospects like Justin Fields, Trey Lance, and Mac Jones potentially available in the first round at sixth overall. Are these players better than Hurts? Eh, it depends on who you ask. Daniel Jeremiah did say he ranked Hurts the 50th overall prospect in the 2020 draft class, and that’s lower than all five of this year’s top-5 QBs, but that isn’t necessarily a death sentence. Dak Prescott wasn’t in Jeremiah’s final top-50 in 2016, and he is now the proud owner of the second-richest contract in NFL history.

With no quarterback in the draft really a sure thing, as some have even started to pick apart Lawrence’s game, the idea of using all 10 of the team’s draft picks on the best player available should serve to give Hurts the best platform to either sink or swim in a season wholly on his shoulders, especially if he’s given a veteran mentor to learn from as his QB2.

If it works, then hey, the Eagles have a starting quarterback and a slightly better roster from which to develop further. And if Hurts faulters? Well, the Eagles will surely have another top-10 draft pick – maybe one a little higher – and a few more 21-23-year-olds with a year of experience at the NFL level from which to ease a future signal-caller’s transition from the college ranks into Nick Sirianni’s system.

Could the Eagles sign a former starter like Jameis Winston, Marcus Mariota, or even Sean Mannion to compete with Hurts in camp to determine the best possible starter heading into Week 1? Sure, but if you’re a football franchise owner looking to sell jerseys and advertising slots, is that really how you want to approach a season that’s already going to be a rough one from a revenue standpoint?

For better or worse, Lurie has sort of backed himself into a corner on this one. If it works out, he’ll look like a savvy owner who plucked an undervalued asset out of obscurity and turned him into a true blue Philadelphia underdog story. But if he doesn’t? Well, the Eagles will be right back at it again, as teams can’t really fire their owner for sticking his nose in the front office’s business.

*sigh* such is life.

Would the Philadelphia Eagles be better off landing a player like Trey Lance and hoping he develops into the next Josh Allen? Sure, maybe so, but the team could just as easily find a way to win with Jalen Hurts in 2021, assuming they bolster their pass-catching corps with a marquee talent in the first round. With neither being a sure thing, it’s understandable to at least shade to the side that leaves Philly with a WR1/TE1 out of the deal too.

Sidebar II: Oh hey, Winston, Mariota, and Mannion were all members of the similarly disastrous 2015 quarterbacks class. Huh, I guess every class can’t be as good as 2012, but then again, that class featured such classic NFL players as Brandon Weeden, Brock Osweiler, and RGIII.