How Hurts has shown off progress while dealing with knee injury

How Hurts has shown off progress while dealing with knee injury originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

Jalen Hurts calls himself a triple threat quarterback. He can beat you with his arm, his legs and his mind.

He didn’t have his legs on Sunday.

But he still turned in one of the best performances of his career.

Even with a lingering knee injury, which clearly took away his ability to scramble and run for chunks, Hurts still led the Eagles to a 38-31 win over the Commanders. Those other two elements — arm and mind — were on full display.

“I think he’s got great numbers from in the pocket and he’s just proving what he can do,” tight end Dallas Goedert said. He doesn’t need his legs, although those are a big weapon for him. But the the things he can do with his arm and his mind are really up there at an elite level as well.”

Hurts on Wednesday was named the NFC Offensive Player of the Week for a performance in which he completed 76.3% of his passes for 319 yards, 4 touchdowns and a passer rating of 135.7.

When asked about his knee injury in his postgame press conference on Sunday in Washington, Hurts simply said, “I’m here.” When the last question of his press conference on Wednesday was about his knee, Hurts simply stood up and left.

Hurts doesn’t want to talk about his knee injury.

And even though it’s worth noting that Hurts hasn’t been on the injury report, which means the Eagles fully expect him to play against the Cowboys, anyone watching the last game can see it: Hurts isn’t 100 percent. He finished the game with four rushing attempts for 6 yards.

That’s the lowest rushing total in Hurts’ career as a starter (42 games) in the NFL. But he was named Player of the Week for the third time in his career.

Think about how unlikely that would have seemed just a couple years ago.

“I think it’s just pure execution,” Hurts said on Wednesday. “Just going out there and making it go, making it go. I don’t measure numbers and all of that based off of our success. It’s just all about winning. Obviously, a lot of great things are going on. I can acknowledge that. But it means nothing if you don’t win.”

A game like the one Hurts played against the Commanders really illustrates the growth we’ve seen from the Eagles’ franchise quarterback over the last couple of seasons.

Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni pointed to experience as one of the biggest reasons for that growth.

“I know that's crazy to say when he’s started for almost three years now, but it is,” Sirianni said. “It's this memory bank of all these different plays that he's ran against these different defenses and knowing where to go with the football more and more consistently, and then just getting more reps and being accurate as a thrower. As far as his pass game he's making good, quick decisions and throwing with good accuracy.”

When asked about his memory bank, Hurts on Wednesday brought up a press conference from the 2021 season when he was still in his first year as an NFL starter and things weren’t going great. Back then, the biggest question surrounding the Eagles was whether or not Hurts could develop into a franchise quarterback.

Sitting in the same seat in the Eagles’ auditorium in 2021, Hurts said that experience was the biggest teacher.

So far, that experience has taught him a lot.

“That doesn’t change. That’s the truest thing,” Hurts said. “So when you experience things, the reality is, times have changed but the mentality has never changed. Time has changed but the mentality hasn’t. Experience, you’d hope the better you’d grow or the further you’d go with the work that you put in. When you see these different things and you have all these experiences to call on, it’s definitely always helpful.”

Hurts said that using his memory bank on the field is natural. It just comes with experience.

After a relatively slow start to his season, Hurts is now firmly in the MVP race again. He has the second-shortest MVP odds behind just Patrick Mahomes, according to PointsBet.

1. Patrick Mahomes: +250
2. Jalen Hurts: +300
3. Tua Tagovailoa: +350
4. Lamar Jackson: +600
5. Josh Allen: +1200

We’ll all be monitoring his knee injury as the season progresses but the bye week is coming up after Sunday to give him a chance to rest. And Hurts’ best game of the season came while he was playing through it.

“It just goes to show his work ethic,” Goedert said. “He relied on something to get here and he knew he needed to improve at something. That’s just the kind of guy he is. He spent a lot of time in the offseason working with different coaches and it just shows up at practice. He works at everything to get better. Over the last four years that he’s been here, you can see it each and every time.”

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