The early results are in, and the Jalen Hurts – Kellen Moore pairing seems to be yielding positive results.
The Eagles started training camp last week, and through the first handful of practices, Jalen Hurts and the Eagles offense have been stellar.
“You can just tell he’s in command, he’s in control,” Moore said. “He’s doing an excellent job at the line of scrimmage with the little nuances, little adjustments that he has at his disposal, and so it’s been really good.”
After the Eagles offense sputtered down the stretch of the 2023-24 season, Philadelphia hired Moore to replace former offensive coordinator Brian Johnson.
Following the season, reports surfaced that Johnson was hampered by head coach Nick Sirianni and his reported vision for what he wanted the offense to be.
Johnson, who was a first-time play-caller in 2023, struggled to formulate any semblance of consistency or identity. Add the Sirianni factor into the picture, and you can understand why the entire operation seemingly failed.
To revitalize their offense, which was described by Sirianni as “a little bit stale” last season, the Eagles brought in Moore, a veteran play-caller. Moore is set to oversee the entire offensive operation and implement his system, while Sirianni will adopt a more CEO-like role.
The success of Moore’s tenure as the Eagles’ offensive coordinator will hinge on two key factors: his ability to build a strong connection with Jalen Hurts and the results of that connection.
The Hurts-Moore pairing is intriguing. On paper, they might not seem like a perfect match, but that could be precisely why it works.
Hurts has never worked with an offensive coordinator who will demand as much from a processing standpoint as a passer as Moore will from him, and Moore has never worked with a quarterback who is as dynamic with his legs as Hurts is.
It’s an intriguing pairing.
A common refrain with Jalen Hurts throughout his career dating back to his college career is the continued improvement he makes on a year-to-year basis.
“Here’s what I know about Jalen, whatever we see that he needs to work on or he sees that he needs to work on, he’s going to get better at that because he puts everything he has into it,” Sirianni said on Hurts in February.
One clear area for Hurts to improve as a passer in 2024 under Moore is utilizing the intermediate middle of the field.
According to TruMedia, among quarterbacks with at least 400 pass attempts in 2023, Hurts had the second-fewest throws in the 10-25 yard range. Over the past three seasons, he ranks second-lowest (among 16 qualified QBs) in such throws among QBs with at least 1,200 attempts.
Yet, in 2023, Hurts led the league in success rate and EPA per drop-back on these throws, though he didn’t attempt them frequently.
Per Pro Football Focus, Hurts was the only quarterback (of 35 qualified quarterbacks) to not have a single turnover-worthy play on his intermediate throws.
In January, before the Eagles playoff matchup with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a report from ESPN surfaced that stated Hurts believed the Eagles offense was “overly reliant on vertical routes and not utilizing short-to-intermediate throws.”
Hurts has shown the ability to hit on these types of throws, but it’s the consistency factor where he seems to struggle.
It’s also fair to question whether or not it’s been a ‘Jalen Hurts’ issue or a coaching staff issue.
Enter Kellen Moore.
For the Eagles, A.J. Brown is one of the best yards after catch receivers in the league. It’s one of the main things that led the Eagles to acquire Brown and give him a $100 million contract. Brown excels with the football in his hands, and the best way to get the ball in his hands?
In-breaking routes over the middle of the field.
Kellen Moore’s offense in 2023 with the Chargers and star wide receiver Keenan Allen saw Allen receive an extremely high volume of targets over the middle of the field.
Of course, Allen isn’t the threat that Brown is with the ball in his hands after the catch, but Moore has shown the ability to get his playmakers the football over the middle of the field.
While Hurts hasn’t typically attacked the middle of the field as a thrower at a high volume, when he does, he’s been one of the league’s best. Add in the fact that Brown is one of the top receivers with the football in his hands, and the story writes itself.
Moore doesn’t exactly have an identity as an offensive mind per se, but he does have core principles that he structures his offense on. Chief among those happens to be structuring his offense around what his players do well by doing a bit of everything from a schematic standpoint.
He uses a variety of the quick passing game, straight dropback game, play action passing game (both from shotgun and under center), RPOs, among other elements.
One area where he hasn’t had to be as expansive though is in the QB run game. The two starting quarterbacks he’s worked with previously in his career as an offensive coordinator (Dak Prescott and Justin Herbert), while mobile, they aren’t game changers on the ground. They aren’t +1’s in the run game.
Jalen Hurts is the complete opposite.
For comparison, from 2019-2022 (Moore’s time as the Cowboys offensive coordinator), Dak Prescott amassed 698 total rushing yards and 8 total rushing touchdowns. In 2023, with Kellen Moore as his offensive coordinator, Justin Herbert (in 13 total games) ran for 228 yards and 3 touchdowns.
In his three total years as a starter, Jalen Hurts has never finished a total season with under 600 rushing yards and/or double-digit rushing touchdowns.
“Yeah, certainly it’s been an excellent factor that Jalen has been able to utilize just being an extra guy in the run game. Certainly, something we want to continue to build off of,” Moore said last week when asked about Hurts as a runner.
Hurts as a runner opens up an entirely untapped avenue for Moore both as a play designer and play-caller.
There was a stark contrast between the Eagles QB run game in 2022 and 2023. Hurts was used as a weapon in the running game in 2022. The concepts were expansive and well thought out. It was purposeful, and it was explosive.
But in 2023, it was more of a button to press when everything else didn’t work. The Athletic characterized it as, “a watered-down version of last year’s (2022) juggernaut.”
The concepts weren’t as wide-ranging. Gone were the counters, options, and zone reads. The RPO game also wasn’t as multiple. Most of the time Philadelphia reverted to a mundane QB draw on 3rd and short when they wanted to put the ball in Hurts’ hands as a runner.
As stated, Moore hasn’t worked with a QB who’s as effective of a runner as Hurts is, but his offenses have typically taken on the identity of the players he has at his disposal. It can be expected that this year with the Eagles will be much of the same in terms of Hurts as a runner.
“I think [Jalen Hurts’] experience over the course of the last few years, all the things that he’s been able to accomplish, we want to build on those things,” Moore said.
“So, when there’s a comfort level with a certain concept or scheme, we want to make sure we emphasize that, continue to build off it — okay, now if this is a core play that we feel really great about, how can we compliment that play, how can we protect it with a different presentation, a different look.”
That includes Hurts as a runner.
For Hurts, his next step as a passer is speeding up his processing and attacking the middle of the field with consistency. For Moore, it’s evolving as a designer and play-caller by working with a quarterback in Hurts who’s a different style of player at the quarterback position than any other quarterback that he’s worked with in his career as a coach.
On paper, Hurts and Moore don’t exactly look like a perfect match. But that’s exactly why they might be a perfect match. In more ways than one, each represents the next step in the evolution of the other.
It’s premature in the process, but the early returns are in, and if they are any indication of the future, the pairing of Moore and Hurts will be a very fruitful one.
Cover Image Credit: AP Photo/Chris Szagola
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