The most disappointing Jalen Hurts stat from Sunday that jumps out at you isn’t the 168 passing yards and it isn’t 57 percent completion percentage or just one touchdown pass.
It’s 14 rushing yards.
How can that even happen?
How can a quarterback who has this rare ability to make plays with his legs be a total non-factor as a runner in the biggest game of the year? A game where the offense couldn’t get anything going after their third drive?
Hurts has this remarkable weapon and he either chooses not to use it or he was being told not to use it, and either way it makes no sense.
Hurts has the 11th-most rushing yards in NFL history by a quarterback – more than 3,500 – and among quarterbacks who’ve started at least three playoff games his 40 rushing yards per game is 7th-highest.
So many times in his career we’ve seen him electrify the offense with big runs in big moments. Even in last year’s playoffs, he ran for 70 yards in the win over the Rams and 72 in the Super Bowl. His 194 rushing yards against the Packers, Rams, Commanders and Chiefs in the playoffs last year are the 4th-most any quarterback has ever had in a single postseason, behind only Steve McNair in 1999 and Colin Kaepernick in 2012 and 2013.
There was a direct correlation between Hurts using his legs and a parade up Broad Street.
When Hurts runs, good things happen.
When he’s had 10 or more carries, the Eagles are 29-8 with 10 straight wins.
But Hurts using his legs does a lot more than just pick up yards. It makes the Eagles unpredictable and keeps defenses off-balance. It opens things up in the passing game. It gets Hurts into a rhythm. This was such a mundane offense this year that it seemed like a no-brainer to get Hurts going in the running game Sunday against the 49ers.
Yet here we are. Five carries for 14 yards with a long gain of four yards.
Total non-factor.
How as a coaching staff you can have this weapon at your disposal, this historically devastating weapon, and choose not to use it is baffling.
Hurts’ running ability and the threat of his running ability are a big part of what sets him apart. It’s what makes him special. When he’s been great, the running game has been a big part of his game. When he doesn’t run, this offense is so much easier to defend and Hurts becomes much less dangerous. He’s always been a good passer, but without the running dimension he’s not elite.
He can also use his legs to buy time in the pocket and run around and find open guys, but he hasn’t done that as much, either. That last play Sunday – that horrible, ill-fated 4th-and-11 – instead of standing in the pocket and firing a no-chance pass into triple coverage, the Jalen Hurts of past years would have danced around to buy time until he found someone who was open. More open than Dallas Goedert on the final play of the season.
This has been an issue all year. Hurts ran 8 ½ times per game his first four years as a starter but only 5 ½ times per game this year. There are a lot of reasons the Eagles had one of the worst offenses in the league, but that’s a big one.
Remember how the offense actually looked functional the first month of the season? The Eagles were 4-0, the offense was averaging 24 points per game and nobody was calling for Kevin Patullo to get fired. A month in, Hurts was averaging 10 carries and 45 rushing yards per game. After that, he dropped to five carries and 20 yards per game the rest of the year and the offense averaged 20 points per game.
It’s no coincidence.
When Hurts ran five times this year, the Eagles were 8-2. When he didn’t, they were 3-4. Throughout his career, they’re 57-24 when he runs five times and 9-12-1 when he doesn’t.
Hurts’ using his legs makes this offense go and it was coaching malpractice to not take advantage of that ability Sunday, especially when the offense went into its weekly shell late in the second quarter.
Hurts was asked numerous times this year why he hasn’t run as much, and he always answered the same way, saying he’s doing what he’s told to do. And the RPO numbers were way down – just 81 RPOs all year compared to 128 last year. And he only ran on 10 of them, compared to 41 last year.
Has he slowed down? Is that why he’s more reluctant to run than in previous years? Maybe a bit. But take away his 11 kneel downs this year and he still averaged 4.6 yards per carry, which isn’t far off his career average of 5.0 coming into the season. When he did take off and run this year it was clear he can still do it.
Even on the 10-yard 1st-down scramble in the third quarter that was negated by a Cam Jurgens holding penalty he looked fast and elusive.
Whoever becomes the new offensive coordinator has to figure out how to get the most out of Jalen Hurts, which Kevin Patullo clearly never did. And a big part of that is going to be finding ways for Hurts to make plays on the move.
We’ve seen what this offense looks like when Hurts uses his legs as a weapon and we’ve seen what it looks like when he doesn’t.
And there’s no reason we should ever have to see it again the way it looked this year.