The relationship between Philadelphia Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni and franchise quarterback Jalen Hurts was under a lot of scrutiny during the 2023 season for one very simple reason: it didn’t seem to be working. Despite getting out to a 10-1 start, the Eagles imploded late, losing five of their last six regular-season games and getting eliminated in the wild-card round of the playoffs. The stench of dysfunction was wafting off the Eagles like they’d been sprayed by a skunk.
ESPN’s Tim McManus and Jeremy Fowler shed light on what went on between between Sirianni and Hurts during the 2023 season in an in-depth exposé published Wednesday. Sirianni’s hands-on nature with the offense reportedly caused Hurts to receive mixed messages between Sirianni and offensive coordinator Brian Johnson. That, in turn, reportedly caused Johnson to shelve his own plans for the offense in order to make both Sirianni and Hurts happy.
But Hurts wasn’t happy, and may not have been for most of the season. One factor was the mixed messages from Sirianni and Johnson, which reportedly led Hurts to start improvising during games to give himself ownership of what was happening. But nothing really worked, at least in part due to the Eagles’ failure to recognize that defenses had figured them out due to their consistent lack of pre-snap motion. Via ESPN, they finished 2023 with a 10.9% pre-snap motion rate, last in the NFL and a shocking 11% below the NFL average.
Another reported factor was the enormous $255 million contract extension Hurts signed prior to the 2023 season. One team source was able to concisely sum up the situation to ESPN: “He was trying to prove he was worth $250 million every throw.”
That’s a mindset that routinely leads to failure, so it’s not hard to imagine Hurts getting desperate to make things work.
Eagles fans may have wild imaginations, but they never would have predicted what Hurts did before the playoffs began in mid-January. In his quest to fix what ailed him and the Eagles, he reportedly called defensive coordinator Wink Martindale, who had recently parted ways with the rival New York Giants.
Martindale told ESPN that he was surprised Hurts called him, but also impressed he was willing to do something so unorthodox. Via ESPN:
“I’ve been doing this for 40 years,” said Martindale, now the defensive coordinator at the University of Michigan, “and it’s the first time I’ve had an opposing quarterback call me up. I thought it was pretty cool that the guy called. It shows you what kind of pro he really is. He’s just looking at every angle that he can to get better.”
Whatever Hurts took from that call didn’t appear to help him or the Eagles when the playoffs started, as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers wiped the floor with them in the wild-card round, 32-9.
Despite what a disaster the end of the 2023 season was, the tone and attitude at training camp have already reportedly improved. Sirianni has been much more hands-off with new offensive coordinator Kellen Moore and getting more involved in other areas as a CEO coach should. He has also reportedly prioritizing “team leadership and camaraderie, meeting frequently with different groups of players, casually or formally.”
Will it work? Will it last? We won’t really know until they face the Green Bay Packers in Brazil on Sept. 6 to open their season. At the very least, it needs to work well enough to prevent Hurts from getting so desperate that he calls someone like ex-Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett for advice.
