All Jalen Hurts Does Is Win, But Is He Elite? Does It Matter?

It’s hard to find a list of the 10 best quarterbacks in the NFL these days that doesn’t include Jalen Hurts, which means the rest of the world has reluctantly come around to his excellence. But only barely, and only to a point. Don’t expect to find him in anyone’s top five. And he’s certainly nobody’s No. 1.

What he remains is a polarizing figure with a remarkable number of detractors considering he’s the reigning Super Bowl MVP and nearly won the same award two years earlier. He’s a fantasy football delight, a football stat-head’s enigma, and a football expert’s question mark.

And, yeah, he doesn’t really seem to care.

“The thing that (Eagles coach Nick Sirianni) has been preaching a lot is, ‘contribution over credit,'” Hurts said recently. “And the old sense of, it doesn’t really matter how it gets done, just a matter of getting it done as a team and really buying into that collective.”

Jalen Hurts is now a Super Bowl MVP but has had no issue sharing the spotlight throughout his career. (Photo by Logan Bowles/Getty Images)

That’s obviously something the 27-year-old Hurts has done throughout his six-year NFL career, and it certainly has served him well. He’s a two-time Pro Bowler, was the MVP runner-up in 2022, has made two trips to the Super Bowl and won one ring. And, of course, he’s entering the third year of a five-year, $255 million contract — though with spiraling salaries, he’s now just the 11th highest-paid QB in the league.

What all the achievement hasn’t always done, though, is put Hurts in the same class as his most respected peers. He ranked fifth on FOX Sports’ list of the top-10 quarterbacks entering the 2025 NFL season — unusually high for him, but still behind Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen and Joe Burrow. He currently ranks sixth in our QB Stock Market. On most other lists, he sits behind Matthew Stafford and Justin Herbert, and sometimes below Baker Mayfield, Dak Prescott, C.J. Stroud and Jayden Daniels.

Hurts is certainly never talked about in the same rarefied air as Mahomes, the quarterback he outplayed in Super Bowl LIX, and whom he faces Sunday in Kansas City.

Maybe beating Mahomes again will bring him the respect he deserves. But it’s frustrating to those that know him best that the respect hasn’t come yet.

“I think that there’s a lot of talk where, ‘Oh, he didn’t throw for this many touchdowns or this many yards,'” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said. “Well, he was super efficient and he won a lot of games. I always admire how selfless he is in those moments and those situations because all he cares about is winning.”

In fact, since the start of the 2022 season, no quarterback has won at a better rate than Hurts. He’s 38-10 for a league-high winning percentage of .792 — one fewer win than Mahomes in that same span, though Mahomes’ winning percentage ranks second at .780 (39-11).

It’s true, though, that his overall stats come off as pedestrian. He threw for just 2,903 yards in 15 starts last season with only 18 touchdown passes. And while he ran for 630 yards and 14 touchdowns, too, those low passing numbers are hard to overlook. It’s also fuel for his critics that he’s never passed for 4,000 yards or more than 23 touchdowns in a single season.

By comparison, six quarterbacks topped 4,000 yards last season, including Geno Smith and Sam Darnold. And five quarterbacks threw at least 35 touchdown passes, including Darnold and Jared Goff.

“If you just look at the numbers you’ll never be impressed with Hurts,” an NFC scout told me. “It’s hard to do in this day and age, but you have to go beyond that.”

Only Derrick Henry has rushed for more touchdowns since Hurts entered the league in 2020. Most of those scores, though, are the product of the Tush Push. (Photo by David Buono/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Case in point: In the Eagles’ season-opening win over the Dallas Cowboys, Hurts’ passing numbers were efficient, but in “game manager” territory. He completed 19 of 23 passes for 153 yards with no touchdowns and no interceptions. Never mind that his completion percentage of 82.6 led the league, as did his “completion percentage above expected” (+15.2%). But he left his mark on the game more with his legs (14 carries, 62 yards, two touchdowns) than with his arm.

Sirianni praised his performance as efficient. But was it? A graph from Pro Football Focus showed Hurts’ performance as an outlier in Week 1. He had the highest average time to throw of any starter (more than 3.4 seconds) but the lowest “ADOt” (average depth of target) — a chart that basically shows he had more time to operate than every other QB, but didn’t do nearly as much with it as maybe he should have done.

And that’s a consistent theme in the Hurts criticism: If he’s so good, why aren’t his numbers better?

“I mean, look at his Super Bowl performances,” the scout said. “He carried them two years ago. He was the best player on the field. And then last year, when the Chiefs loaded up to throttle (Saquon) Barkley, look how Hurts made them pay.

“The Eagles’ argument is always, ‘He’d do more if we asked him to do more.’ And it sure looks to me like they’re right.”

That is the best argument for Hurts being a truly elite quarterback. He unloaded on the Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII, completing 27 of 38 passes for 304 yards and a touchdown while running 15 times for 70 yards and three touchdowns. And in the blowout in Super Bowl LIX, he set up the first touchdown with a 27-yard strike down the sideline to Jahan Dotson and later hit DeVonta Smith for a 46-yard touchdown.

Jalen Hurts has a big arm. He just doesn’t always use it. Will his aversion to pushing the ball downfield materially impact the Eagles? (Photo by Terence Lewis/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

So, the ability to throw downfield is clearly there — when he’s asked to do it.

“He runs so much and so well that people sometimes assume that’s what he does best,” an NFC offensive coordinator told me. “But believe me, he can throw, too. And he can throw on the run. You know how hard that is to stop?”

Sometimes, when Hurts is rolling, he’s impossible to stop. But an Eagles team built on a powerful offensive line, a strong Barkley-led rushing attack, and a sometimes dominant defense, doesn’t need Hurts to be unstoppable often. He has just 13 career 300-yard passing games in 78 starts, and just one in nine playoff starts, but not because he can’t throw for that much.

It’s because the Eagles don’t ask him to. With all their other assets, they want him, and maybe need him, to be efficient more than anything else.

“I think when you’re game planning and stuff like that, it’s all about just seeing what’s happening and letting him play and be efficient,” new Eagles offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo said. “Each game is different going into it. You think you’re going to get one thing, you may get another. You really just want to look at, how do we stay on track and advance the ball and do what we need to? As long as that continues, that’s kind of the goal.”

That sounds like the job of a “game manager,” but to the Eagles, Hurts is so much more than that. He’s the consummate leader, a selfless star, and an athlete with the ability to turn it on if they need it.

Is that elite enough?

“Jalen, I love how selfless he is,” Sirianni said. “He’s been so efficient as a quarterback, taking care of the football, efficiently going where the right place is with the football. When there’s judgment on the outside, I don’t care. He was efficient with the football, and he did everything he needed to do for us to win the game.”

That’s what the Eagles ask Hurts to do every week, and more often than not, that’s what he does. To them, the only numbers that matter are wins.

Ralph Vacchiano is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He spent six years covering the Giants and Jets for SNY TV in New York, and before that, 16 years covering the Giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News. Follow him on Twitter at @RalphVacchiano.

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