The long process that made Eagles believers in Jalen Hurts: 'He's a flat-out winner' (2024)

From his home office, commissioner Roger Goodell read from a blue card with an NFL logo.

“With the 53rd pick in the 2020 NFL Draft, the Philadelphia Eagles select … Jalen Hurts, quarterback, Oklahoma.”

The ESPN broadcast cut to Eagles head coach Doug Pederson, smiling in his home office, then to Eagles general manager Howie Roseman, in his home office, as he slapped hands with his son — who wore a Carson Wentz jersey. Less than one year earlier, the Eagles had signed Wentz to a four-year, $128 million contract extension, guaranteeing $107 million of it. Wentz then threw for a career-best 4,039 yards and led the Eagles to an NFC East title.

This being the COVID-19 draft, there was no crowd to react, but most Eagles fans were not as pleased about the selection as Pederson and Roseman seemed to be. According to a poll by Bleeding Green Nation, 61 percent of more than 13,000 fans gave the Hurts selection an “F” grade. Only 12 percent graded it higher than a C.

Professional opinions were nearly as harsh. “Hate the pick,” ESPN’s Mike Greenberg tweeted. “So many places he might have been interesting, this is not one of them. Don’t get it at all.”

“Upon Further Review,” the headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer read, “Eagles’ drafting of Jalen Hurts was as silly as it seemed”

The reaction on social media was as swift as it was severe, and the Eagles were taken aback by the backlash. Roseman later said the Eagles decided to try to keep the fire under control by moving their Day 2 news conference to the middle of the third round in an unplanned maneuver.

“We believe (Wentz) is a guy to lead us to our next Super Bowl championship,” Roseman said then, defending the pick. “For better or worse, we are quarterback developers. We want to be a quarterback factory.”

The Packers caught some heat for taking quarterback Jordan Love with the 26th pick of the first round, but to Roseman, it felt like the Eagles took more for choosing Hurts 27 selections later.

“I think the magnitude of the reaction was a little surprising to us, and I think that just the conversation around it for weeks and months to come kind of surprised us a little bit,” he told The Athletic last month. “I’m not saying we would not have chosen (Hurts) if we had known that. We were just surprised by how much life it took on.”

Nobody, including Roseman, could have predicted Wentz would start only 12 more games for the team that traded up to select him with the second pick of the 2016 draft. Or that two years after the 2020 draft, Hurts would become the MVP runner-up on a team that made it to the Super Bowl, then would be rewarded with a five-year contract extension worth $255 million.

If Roseman knew what was to come, he would have selected Hurts in the first round. If other GMs knew that, Hurts would have been a top-10 pick, chosen ahead of Tua Tagovailoa, who beat out Hurts at Alabama years earlier.

But after four years of scrutiny, Roseman saw something in Hurts.

When he started the second game of the 2016 season, Hurts became the first true freshman quarterback to start at Alabama in 32 years. He led the Crimson Tide to 11 straight victories before losing to Clemson in the national championship game. He was voted SEC Player of the Year that season and set a school record with 36 touchdowns. His 954 rushing yards were the most ever by an Alabama quarterback.

Among the Eagles evaluators who saw Hurts play in person that year were Southwest scout Shawn Heinlen and assistant director of scouting Alan Wolking. His ability to make plays with his feet appealed to an organization whose appreciation of mobile quarterbacks was increasing.

“When you look at where the quarterback position was going, with these multidimensional talents who could create plays with their arms, their legs and their minds, we were trying to predict where we were going with the position,” Roseman says. “Carson had that ability, too.”

Then-Ravens area scout Ian Cunningham also saw Hurts in person during his freshman season, including at the national championship. One quality stood out.

“He was always cool, calm and collected no matter what, even in the national championship game as a true freshman,” says Cunningham, who became the Eagles’ director of college scouting in 2017. “He always had this poise and even-keeled demeanor.”

During Hurts’ sophom*ore season in 2017, he led Alabama to victories in its first 11 games before losing to Auburn in the regular-season finale. He was voted MVP of the Sugar Bowl after beating Clemson, but in the national championship game — with Alabama getting shut out by Georgia at halftime — head coach Nick Saban replaced Hurts with then-freshman Tagovailoa, who led the Crimson Tide to victory.

Hurts was the backup to Tagovailoa the next season, but he guided back-to-back fourth-quarter touchdown drives in a 35-28 comeback victory over Georgia in the SEC championship game. He then graduated in three years.

Even on the bench, Hurts impressed the Eagles.

“We know there’s going to be adversity,” Roseman says. “And so we’re always looking at how guys overcome adversity, their resilience, their determination. The way he handled that year when he didn’t play for most of the year, and then the way he played when he had the opportunity, that was something.”

After the season, Hurts, with Saban’s blessing, transferred to Oklahoma for his senior year. On Sept. 1, 2019, Hurts accounted for 508 yards of offense in his first game, setting a school record. With Hurts humming, the Sooners won their first seven games.

The Eagles began to envision Hurts wearing midnight green. They kept thinking about it as he led Oklahoma to five wins down the stretch, including against Baylor in the Big 12 championship game. The Sooners lost to LSU and Joe Burrow in the Peach Bowl, and Burrow and Hurts finished 1-2 in voting for the Heisman Trophy.

The transfer to Oklahoma enabled the Eagles to see Hurts learn and quickly master a completely different offense. What’s more, they saw significant development in Hurts as a quarterback under Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley. Roseman said he witnessed a “huge jump” and was impressed with how Hurts threw receivers open.

“The more we were exposed to him, the more we liked,” Roseman said. “It started when the scouts filed those fall (2019) reports. We saw he had physical tools, arm talent and unique athleticism. He’s a winner, and he’s a leader.”

NFL evaluators still were concerned with Hurts’ accuracy, and Cunningham acknowledges it was a question. “It wasn’t always there, but he did show the ability to anticipate when it was clean,” Cunningham says. “That helped me feel more comfortable because I think you can develop accuracy. The inaccuracy was attributable to a lot of lower body (issues) — a wider base, inconsistent footwork, those types of things.”

Pederson was unconcerned about what others said were inconsistent throws. “His story is incredible, right?” Pederson says. “At Alabama, he’s the guy, then he’s not the guy. Then he goes to Oklahoma. It made me believe this is a special player.

“I didn’t see the other stuff. We could coach the other stuff, give him what he needed to be successful, prepare in the offseason and training camp and make him better that way. There was enough there to think that with some work he could become a solid backup and then a solid starter.”

Hurts’ intangibles continued to impress at Oklahoma. Cunningham saw determination, resilience, mental toughness, work ethic and competitiveness. “We fell in love with those traits because we knew he was going to work to get to whatever his ceiling was,” says Cunningham, who attended Oklahoma’s games against Texas and Texas Christian that year. “You could bet on the person because of the intangibles.”

Those intangibles also were evident in his runs. Hurts led his team with 1,298 rushing yards — more than any college quarterback except Navy’s Malcolm Perry. The Eagles saw more than speed and elusiveness in his ground gains. They saw raw strength, drive and will. “Mental and physical toughness came through,” Pederson says.

As the Eagles dug in, they understood why. Hurts squatted 500 pounds in a powerlifting competition as a 198-pound high school sophom*ore. His father, Averion Hurts, coached him at Channelview High School near Houston. “The family background was very appealing,” Roseman says.

Even though it meant missing his grandfather’s funeral, Hurts participated in the Senior Bowl, where he was voted the offensive practice quarterback of the week on the South team. His combine performance also was strong, as he threw the ball impressively and ran a 4.59 in the 40-yard dash — the fastest among quarterbacks.

Roseman saw improvement on each step of Hurts’ journey — at Oklahoma, at the Senior Bowl and at the combine. Partly because of the COVID-19 lockdown, the GM’s only in-person pre-draft exposure to the quarterback was the team’s 15-minute interview with him in Indianapolis.

“I remember him in that room; he’s an easy presence,” Roseman says. “You could feel the leadership, the confidence. He has this very calm demeanor. It was a good interaction.”

Roseman left feeling comfortable with Hurts’ football character.

Over video conferences, the Eagles dug in on Hurts, discussing him as a staff and crystalizing their opinions about him in relation to other players. Cunningham told the other evaluators what his sources at Alabama and Oklahoma said. Pederson shared his research, including information from conversations with Riley and Brian Daboll, his offensive coordinator at Alabama, who both told Pederson how hard Hurts worked and how easily he led.

The team sent offensive coordinator Press Taylor to the Oklahoma pro day on March 11. He was one of 55 NFL representatives who watched Hurts throw to CeeDee Lamb and other receivers. Taylor returned from Norman impressed.

The Eagles discussed how Hurts projected to the next level. “There was talk about how you would use him,” Cunningham says. “Dak Prescott’s name was thrown around, Cam Newton, but it was elements of their game. Jalen was kind of unique, but he possessed elements of their games.”

He also possessed elements of Russell Wilson’s game. The Eagles planned to draft Wilson in the third round of the 2012 draft, but they passed on him twice in the second round, and the Seahawks took him 13 picks ahead of them. Philadelphia has rued the one that got away ever since.

Roseman noted that, like Wilson, Hurts has a strong lower body, throws the deep ball well and is shorter than the ideal at 6-foot-1. “When you watch Jalen, sometimes you think of Russell Wilson as far as the size, the athleticism and arm strength when Russell was a younger quarterback,” Pederson says. “But Jalen is his own guy.”

Pederson, a quarterback specialist, was all in on Hurts. “Obviously, Doug’s opinion was a huge part of everything we did,” Roseman says. “We had a lot of trust in him in his evaluations at that position. A lot of credit goes to him because we’re coming off three straight playoff appearances, including a world championship. To take a quarterback after we just paid Carson, it had to come not just from the front office and ownership, but from the coaching staff as well.”

For Hurts to become an Eagle, Pederson had to believe he could be more than a backup — and he did.

“I thought he would be a starter with time,” Pederson says. “I didn’t think it would be right away. I thought he was a guy you could groom and put in your system.”

Not everyone in the front office saw Hurts the way Pederson did.

“(Hurts) was a polarizing figure in the sense that some people liked him, some saw him as a developmental quarterback and some thought he was a backup,” Cunningham says. “I thought he was a developmental quarterback that had upside.”

Roseman also sought the opinion of an outside source — former Eagles head coach Andy Reid. ESPN’s Chris Mortensen reported Roseman, thinking Reid’s Chiefs would not draft a quarterback, asked him what he thought of Hurts, and Reid told him he thought highly of him.

The Eagles’ board was stacked by Roseman, Pederson, Cunningham and director of player personnel Andy Weidl. Usually, there aren’t more than a handful of prospects that every evaluator in a draft room agrees on. Hurts was not in that handful for the Eagles.

“Are there going to be conversations where somebody might question if that’s the guy? There always are,” Pederson says. “But some of our scouts really liked him as a player.”

A quarterback was not a must-have, according to Pederson. But the Eagles would not pass on one they had conviction about. As the draft grew near, they discussed the importance of depth at the position — particularly given Philadelphia’s history.

Roseman brought up 2002, when Donovan McNabb was injured and A.J. Feeley and Koy Detmer helped the Eagles win five of six down the stretch before McNabb returned for the playoffs. He recalled 2006, when Jeff Garcia subbed for an injured McNabb and won six of his eight starts, including one in the playoffs.

Four years later, Michael Vick came off the bench midway through the season in place of Kevin Kolb and won six of the eight games he started. Three years after that, Vick was on the other end of a quarterback change when he was benched for Nick Foles after losing four of six starts. Foles threw 27 touchdowns and two interceptions while going 8-2.

In 2017, Foles bailed out the Eagles again, winning the Super Bowl after Wentz, who was an MVP candidate, was injured in December.

“No team probably has benefited more from the backup quarterback position than the Philadelphia Eagles, certainly over the 20-plus years that I’ve been in Philadelphia,” says Roseman, who joined the Eagles in 2000 as a salary-cap counsel. “So we’re always trying to find the next guy we can count on and feel confident in and then have him on a rookie deal.”

And although the world outside the team’s NovaCare Complex had not grasped it, the Eagles had as much reason to fortify the position as ever. Their backups were Nate Sudfeld, who had yet to start a game in four years, and Kyle Lauletta, who spent the previous season on their practice squad. And as for Wentz, injuries had limited him to a total of nine plays in the Eagles’ six postseason games over the previous three years.

The possibility of taking a quarterback in the first round was ruled out because of the financial commitment to Wentz. So the Eagles knew they wouldn’t have a shot at Burrow, Tagovailoa or Justin Herbert, all of whom were gone by the sixth pick. And they clearly were more interested in Hurts than Love. “We spent a lot more time on Jalen,” Roseman says. “Jalen was one of those guys throughout the fall that we liked.”

The Eagles weren’t sure how other teams rated Hurts. They believed it was possible that no one else would take him in the first two rounds. But taking a gamble that he would fall to the end of the third round — Philadelphia traded its original third-round pick for Darius Slay but still had a comp pick — was ruled out.

“We had learned from that situation with Russell when we try to get cute with quarterbacks that we like,” Roseman says. “You can never get hurt drafting quarterbacks. There’s nothing more important.”

In 2007, the Eagles had taken Kolb in the second round, then were able to trade him to the Cardinals for a second-round pick and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie. Even if Hurts never displaced Wentz, he could bring value to the organization.

“I’m sure some teams had him in the third or fourth round,” Pederson says. “Maybe we were the higher team on him than others. We felt comfortable enough to take him in the second. In this business, you know when you have a good player and you don’t need a whole lot of convincing. He was that guy for us.”

The morning before the second round, the Eagles met virtually. “That’s when we made the decision,” Pederson says. “If he’s there, let’s take him.”

Some in the organization expressed surprise, if not shock. Because there was less communication than usual due to COVID-19, the decision-making process was less inclusive than in any other year.

On draft day, the participants in the primary video conference — the de facto draft room — were owner Jeffrey Lurie, Roseman, Pederson, Weidl, Cunningham, senior football adviser Tom Donahoe and Alec Halaby, the vice president of football operations who oversaw analytics. Scouts were on another video conference, and coaches were on a third.

Some in the organization were hoping for Southern Illinois safety Jeremy Chinn, according to reports by the Inquirer’s Jeff McLane and Fox’s Jay Glazer. But the majority were in favor of drafting Hurts. “There were people that did want Chinn,” Cunningham says. “In draft meetings, it rarely comes up like that because you are going position by position, so you are comparing quarterbacks to other quarterbacks.”

And it didn’t really matter if some in the organization didn’t want to draft a quarterback that high. What mattered was that Roseman, Pederson and Lurie were in accord, and they were.

“Coach Pederson and myself liked Jeremy Chinn, but our job is to determine the vision and then make sure it’s executed,” Roseman says. “So when we were on the clock and having those conversations, it really came down to the quarterback versus safety. The quarterback we like. The safety we like. We’re going with the quarterback.”

Lurie’s role in the Hurts decision was not insignificant. A draftnik before becoming an owner, Lurie doesn’t tell Roseman whom to take, but he helps shape the vision and ensures his lieutenants adhere to it.

“I think Jeffrey’s role in this was to ask questions about how we’re thinking and make sure we’re staying true to our principles,” Roseman says. “Making sure we’re doing the right things not only for the short term but the long term.”

Lurie bought into Hurts in part because of his intangibles.

“I remember growing up as a kid watching football before free agency, and teams gave quarterbacks three, four, five years to develop,” he said at the Super Bowl in February. “And it harkens back to not just picking who is immediately ready to play in the NFL at a very high level, but who has the desire for greatness, the intelligence to be great and the talent — the throwing ability and the running ability and the team-oriented approach. It was kind of a no-brainer for us, but it was a very unpopular pick at the time.”

In addition to liking the player, Lurie favored the concept of drafting a quarterback. “Jeffrey was on board with it,” Pederson says. “He likes quarterbacks. I remember him being all on board with taking him in the second round.”

The Eagles wanted to try to get Wentz on board with the decision as well, so as their selection approached, Pederson called him. “We wanted to make sure (Wentz) knew he was our guy,” Pederson says. “We wanted to make sure our starting quarterback was good with everything.”

By then, Wentz already knew there was a possibility the team would draft a quarterback. Before draft day, Wentz had been filled in on what the team was thinking. “It was kind of like, ‘Hey, we committed to you, you got the money, but this could also benefit you,'” Roseman says. “One of our scouts says it really well. He says, ‘If you catch a cold and miss two games, those two games that we go 2-0 or 1-1 or 0-2 can determine home-field advantage.’ So we have to be prepared for those games.'”

Despite the communication, Wentz did not handle the addition of Hurts well, which led to his flameout in Philadelphia.

Wentz should not have been surprised by the pick, but almost everyone else was — including Hurts. On the “New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce” podcast, Hurts said he never thought the Eagles would select him — suspecting he would be taken by the Steelers, Vikings or Raiders instead. “I had had no idea I would come here,” he said.

It was the Eagles who had the idea. And they owned it, then and ever since.

“We were thrilled to take him when we did,” Pederson says. “And you can see that he’s playing exactly the way we thought he could.”

“I think you saw (last season) the things we saw in him back then,” Roseman says. “He was in the second year in the system and doing everything they asked him to do. He understands it, and this kid is a winner — he’s a flat-out winner. That’s what we saw.”

— Zach Berman and Bo Wulf contributed to this report.

(Illustration: Sam Richardson / The Athletic; photos: Kevin C. Cox, Alika Jenner, Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)