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Maybe the Eagles should honor Abdul Carter’s father as a Hometown Hero when the Giants come to town in a few years, too. Micah Parsons is a Philadelphia sports fan, you know what, let’s make his entire family part of ring night. This chicanery is madness*!

*Unless the Phillies sign Schwarber in free agency. Then it’s a very nice moment and congratulations to his father, Greg.

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As always, you can reach me at [email protected]

Sometimes as a writer, you come up with an idea so original that you cannot wait to share it with your audience. So perfect that you cannot believe someone had not thought of it beforehand. Well everyone, today is one of those days. This new unchartered territory?

NFL quarterback rankings, and Jalen Hurts’ place within them.

OK, so there might have been some discussion about this subject over the past few months. Roger Goodell is trying to make the NFL a 12-month league, and while he is not all the way there yet, he might be if you count the July quarterback #content cycle.

Dear reader, I promised that I would only touch this subject once this year. Today is that day, after Mike Sando’s QB Tiers (which I have long considered the gold standard in the genre) dropped. Sando gets 50 NFL execs and coaches to anonymously rate the league’s quarterbacks on a 1-5 scale that is not perfect, but decently well-defined. He then averages all of those numbers together, and voila, you have the rankings.

Hurts ranked tied for ninth this year. I am gonna get the head-to-head takes out of the way first, because this is the fun part. Here is how I feel about these players ranking ahead of Hurts.

Tier 1

The cream of the crop. But, and this has nothing to do with Jalen, Josh and Lamar, can you show us a little more in the playoffs? Those two guys should be at least a little embarrassed that last year’s Chiefs got out of the AFC. Allen, in particular. That Kansas City team was incredibly flawed, which we saw when they played a real Super Bowl participant.

Tier 2

Alright, the league-wide takes are over. Let’s talk about the Jalen of it all.

The Eagles’ offense was quietly not elite last year by some metrics. Of the advanced numbers, I like EPA per play the best and the Birds finished a respectable sixth in that category. But I am not a full homer, we all remember that the passing offense was clunky for long stretches of 2024. Don’t ask me, either, A.J. Brown bluntly answered “passing” when broadly asked what had to better in mid-December. He was right! Saquon Barkley had a historic year, and post-bye, the Eagles had the best defense in the league by a mile. Jalen had a lot of help.

For much of last year, Jalen was ultra-conservative with the football. That was frustrating, considering the caliber of the offensive line and weapons at his disposal. He ended the regular season with 18 passing touchdowns (14 rushing TDs, thank you Tush Push) to just 5 picks. And during the year, Jalen maintained that he was simply trying to win the games. I did not love that explanation in real time, because I did not think “not turning the ball over at all costs” and “winning games” were mutually exclusive.

Now, though? To the victor goes the spoils, and Jalen deserves to spin it that way. You know why? In the two biggest games of the year, the NFC Championship and Super Bowl, here is what he did: 37-50 for 467 yards passing (could have been way more if they were not blowouts), three touchdowns to one interception… with four rushing scores just for kicks. On the biggest stage, Jalen let it loose and outdueled two of the guys ahead of him on all of these lists.

As a lifelong Philly sports fan/observer, being on the other side of ring culture is a trip. I went to college in New York, and some of my best friends are Giants fans. Anyway, I used to get in serious arguments with them about Phillip Rivers vs. Eli Manning. I would talk about Rivers’ incredible numbers and all of Eli’s low moments. They would tell me to count the rings (not very classy of them), the argument would end, and then we would play Mario Kart or beer pong or something. In retrospect, I feel roughly the same about Eli but probably went too hard to bat for Rivers.

Now, our guy is The Winner… but with an even better track record than Eli in the biggest games. On the biggest stages, Hurts has turned into a Tier 1 quarterback multiple times. That means something.

Ultimately, I think No. 9 is a fine ranking for Jalen Hurts. I would have him a few spots higher, but whatever. That second tier, which goes down to No. 14, is made of pretty darn good players that might fluctuate from year-to-year. And heading into the season, here are my three main thoughts about where Jalen Hurts ranks league-wide…

(1) Internet quarterback analysis mostly drives me nuts, and that is where Jalen fares poorly. My friend Sheil Kapadia calls the online film grinders “football hipsters.” These people watch a ton of film, but respectfully, I also think they over-index on the wrong things. This is a pretty good analogy.

Sure, it’s cool that Geno Smith can get off his first two reads and hit the backside dig a few times per game. Those plays are the guitar riffs in the above analogy. For the most part, Jalen does not do that stuff (sometimes he does).

You know what Jalen does, though? Throws an excellent deep ball. Makes plays with his legs. Shines when the lights are brightest. Makes 4th and 1 an automatic play. At some point, the big picture has to outweigh the minutiae.

(2) If you have Hurts ranked low, the rest of the Eagles better be ranked high. And I mean really high.

Online Eagles fans can generally get a little crazy about their team. Sometimes I do not agree, but I love the passion. They are why I have a job. But one Online Eagles Fan point that I agreed with time and again this summer is that if a QB ranker does not think Jalen Hurts is a Top-10 quarterback, you have to think the rest of the roster is absolutely loaded. You cannot say that the QB has a superteam around him and then nitpick the rest of the roster when it comes to them individually. It is one or the other.

(3) The lack of continuity on Hurts’ coaching staff gets underrated. Did Jalen have better players to work with than Patrick Mahomes and Matthew Stafford last year? Why yes he did! But I often see the rosters cited, and the coaching staff does not get anywhere near the same discussion. It probably should. You do not think having Andy Reid and Sean McVay coach you, design your offense and call your plays for 5+ years is an advantage? I sure do.

Meanwhile, Jalen is about to begin his 11th straight season of football with a new play-caller. That is a legit disadvantage! I hope Kevin Patullo is decent, but unlike Jared Goff, Jalen Hurts knows how to navigate a new face calling the plays. It’s all he knows.

OK, that is all I got. See you next August.

Two practice takes: Jalen Hurts, perfect ball placement in practice on Tuesday.

Anecdotally in reading the practice notes, Jalen is having some success with back-shoulder throws at camp. That would be a nice weapon to have more consistently. As much as I hate on Eli Manning as a QB, I felt like he had a nice back-shoulder toss back in the day.

EJ also had an update on the left guard spot on the first day without Landon Dickerson for at least a few weeks. All you Toth Heads will be fired up for this one.

Brett Toth running with the 1s, Darian “All I Do Is Win” Kinnard bumps over to work with the 2s. I might not read too much into that, though, because maybe the Eagles are staying status quo because they expect Dickerson back for Week 1.

Flyers win! An arbitration case, that is.

Do you remember The Curious Case of Ryan Johansen? I forgot about this one, it was almost a year ago. The gist of it…

Johansen was scheduled to make $8 million in his final year, so the Flyers were on the hook for $4 million both in real life and on their salary cap. But now they are not.

From the outside, it looks like quite a bag fumble from Johansen… who, in another juicy storyline, is repped by Kurt Overhardt, Cutter Gauthier’s agent. No love lost there.

Cincinnati 6, Phillies 1: Let’s keep it short and sweet here.

Am I worried about Ranger’s lack of velocity and recent dip in form? Yes, at least a little. We have seen this story before. The past two seasons, the first two months of Ranger were amazing. After that, it has been a little dicey.

And Aaron Nola, welcome to The Show.

Phils-Reds rubber match, at 5:10 p.m. of all times! Bizarre time for a Wednesday baseball game. Eagles-Browns joint practice as well, plus a Union U.S. Open Cup match.

Your tentative Wednesday schedule at ​PHLY​:

Let's make it a good one.

Rich Hofmann
Daily Newsletter Editor
PHLY SPORTS