Jalen Hurts continues to be one of the favorites to win the league MVP award. If the Eagles capture the top seed in the NFC, there’s a pretty good chance Hurts will win it.
That’s not preventing one analyst and former NFL quarterback from making an aggressive suggestion.
NFL Network’s David Carr, the brother of Saints quarterback Derek Carr, said Tuesday that the Eagles should consider benching Jalen Hurts for Marcus Mariota, so that Hurts can get fully healthy.
Carr’s argument is that the Eagles need to get Hurts to 100 percent, in order to get the most out of his skills.
“Clearly, Jalen isn’t comfortable reading through a defense in a drop-back pass scenario,” Carr said. “Some would say he’s not even good at it. And I think that when you look at this team, you have to have a serious conversation if you’re Philly. And you have to really say, ‘Is it better for us to play Marcus Mariota right now and let Jalen get fully healthy?’ Because I would argue that it does not matter if they’re the number one seed. Because if the 49ers come into Philly again, they do not care.”
Michael Robinson tried to understand how the conversation with Hurts would go.
“If you’re Nick Sirianni, this is the type of decision and conversation you have to have, if you have a big-picture mentality,” Carr said. “And I think you can have that conversation, honestly, with Jalen and you can sit him down. That’s all Jalen talks about is the end result. And getting to the Super Bowl and winning that thing.”
Carr’s point carries a plausible nuance that most will ignore. Although the Eagles have never disclosed any sort of injury for Hurts this year, he clearly has had a knee problem. In the past four games (Cowboys, Chiefs, Eagles, 49ers), Hurts has been the lesser of the two quarterbacks. Although the Eagles have won three of those games, Carr’s point is that the best chance to win in the postseason could come from having a fully healthy Hurts.
Of course, this assumes that sitting Hurts now will make him better later. It also opens the door to the possibility of the Eagles not even winning the division and having to go on the road for at least two rounds of the playoffs, if Mariota plays.
The only practical approach for the Eagles is to keep going, one week at a time. Along the way, they need to hope that Hurts will take full advantage of the time between games to get healthier than he has been.
