Philadelphia Eagles: Clay Harbor has a point on Jalen Hurts’ Madden rating

Clay Harbor played for four different teams over his NFL career; he was claimed off of waivers by the Jaguars, re-signed with the team for a two-year deal, and then played for both the Detroit Lions and the New England Patriots before officially hanging up his cleats for good and transitioning to the next chapter of his career, which has included a stop on The Bachelorette, The Bachelor in Paradise, and the XFL’s Team 9 practice squad.

But at his heart, all of these years later, Harbor still bleeds green, as it was the Philadelphia Eagles who drafted the Illinois-born tight end out of Missouri State in the fourth round of the 2010 NFL Draft and kept him around for the first three years of his NFL career.

So, when Harbor has something to say about the Eagles, people tend to listen, like his story about being the actual person who burned Nnamdi Asomugha at his first practice in Philly or his takes on former coach Doug Pederson.

But what about his video game opinions? Does Harbor’s latest take, that Madden 23 rating Jalen Hurts the same as Justin Fields is a wild diss on the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback make sense, or is there some truth to EA’s assessment? Let’s find out.

Clay Harbor has a point about the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback.

Alright, before we get too into the weeds, here is a dictation of Clay Harbor’s tweet so it’s fresh.

"Justin fields: 7 tds 10 int 73 ratingMadden rating: 74Jalen Hurts: 16 tds 9 ints 87 ratingMadden rating: 74What do they base these on? #Eagles #Bears #NFLTwitter"

Alright, on paper, Harbor’s case is pretty easy to follow and pretty darn spot on; Hurts’ numbers are better in all three qualifiers, and yet his rating is exactly the same. While some of that could have to do with how some stats are valued in the Madden-verse, say Fields has better deep accuracy, typically awareness is the weird catchall term that is used to make a 40-year-old quarterback like Tom Brady rate higher than Justin Hebert despite having worse all-around athletic measurables in every physical area.

So what gives? Does Madden feel that Hurts is a low-IQ quarterback? Or are they still holding strong on Fields being a premier prospect due to his Ohio State stake and draft pedigree?

Frankly, it’s probably more of the latter than the former.

According to Madden, Hurts and Fields are tied as the 24th-best quarterbacks in the NFL. They are “worse” than past their prime performers like Kirk Cousins, and Matt Ryan and even rank behind Baker Mayfield, Teddy Bridgewater, and Jimmy Garoppolo, who very well may all start out the season as backups.

Fair? Eh, probably not;  Hurts, and Fields, too, should probably be around the 18-20 range since they are expected to start, and this is, in fact, a video game, but hey, it could be worse – Carson Wentz is ranked a 73, Daniel Jones is a 70, and whomever the Pittsburgh Steelers decide to start will be the rare player with a rating in the 60s, either 69 for Mitchell Trubisky or a 68 for Kenny Pickett.

Considering ratings aren’t set in stone – unless you’re an offline gamer – it’s possible either Hurts or Fields could be in the upper 70s by Philly’s Bye Week, or things could really bad, and they could be in the Wentz-Jones no-man zone of the NFC East.

Who knows, maybe Jalen Hurts Mania hasn’t traveled as far outside of the City of Brotherly Love as many assumed. Maybe fans – and video game raters – in LA still see the OklaBama player as more of a prospect than a ready-made performer and have rated him accordingly? Either way, by mid-season, Clay Harbor’s take may very well be vindicated by fans the world over, instead of just those who root for the Philadelphia Eagles.