Jalen Hurts doesn’t have any answers, either.
“Right now, we’re searching for how can we put ourselves in a position to win football games and do it in a way where we can establish ourselves and have an identity in that,” Hurts said Wednesday.
“We do have a standard, and the players have a standard. And we’re eager to gain that consistency that we want. There’s pride in that.”
How bad is it?
Only two teams – both in the AFC – are gaining fewer yards per game. Only three teams – all in the AFC – throwing for fewer yards. Only four teams – three in the AFC – are rushing for fewer yards per carry. Only three teams are allowing more sacks. Only six teams are netting fewer first downs.
You watch this offense and it’s hard to figure out what they want to be and how they want to play.
Who are they? What are they?
They don’t have an identity, and that was the subject of an offensive player and coach meeting on Monday. Because right now, this is not a championship offense and it may not even be a playoff offense.
Can another meeting make a difference for an offense that’s scored 17 points in back-to-back games and has managed just 14 points after halftime over the last three weeks?
“When I think about that meeting, I just think about the direction that we’re going to go in,” Hurts said. “Coming out and obviously establishing ourselves and really kind of just searching for that identity of what we want to be as an offense.
“I think we’ve shown a lot of different things out there. We’ve put a lot of different things on tape and we haven’t been consistent enough.”
Hurts was asked if that direction, that identity, that the coaches want the offense to go in was made clear in the meeting.
His answer didn’t clear up anything.
“It’s been different every week, but I think we’re all just kind of all in it together,” he said. “I think that’s the most important thing. So when I think about how 2021 was, it was different. 2022 and then ‘23 were different from the year before and ‘24 obviously had its own uniqueness to it.
“And so, you know, the goal is to go out there and win.”
The problem with searching for an identity is that the Eagles haven’t really been good at anything on offense the first six weeks of the season. They’ve had some good stretches – the first half against Dallas, the second half vs. the Rams, the first half against the Bucs, the first half against the Giants.
But they have yet to play a complete game. They haven’t scored more than 10 points in both halves of any of their six games.
They head to Minneapolis this weekend to face a Vikings defense that’s sixth in the NFL in yards allowed, fifth in points allowed, second in passing yards allowed, second on third down and sixth in sacks. They held the Falcons and Bengals to one touchdown and the Browns and Bears to two. They’ve only allowed one touchdown of 10 yards.
As for Hurts, he’s played well at times, struggled at times. Like everybody else.
“Obviously, I have urgency,” Hurts said. “There’s an eagerness to get pointed in a direction and just go out there and execute and play clean.”
Answers? They’re all searching. What will the offense look like moving forward? Are they going to become a running team like last year? Are they going to start airing it out down the field more? Some combination of both to try and keep defenses guessing?
“We’ll see, we’ll see, just got to play together as a group for sure,” Hurts said. “That’s that’s always where it starts. But we just want to go out there and establish ourselves. It looks different every week. It’s evolved and continued to evolve, but it’s always the goal has been to always find ways to win.
“And I think in all our games, we’ve had opportunities to do special things. We just hadn’t really executed to the standard that we want to. And so, some of that is taking control of the things that you can, and then some of that is taking the next step in areas.”