Twenty points made the Eagles’ offense look a lot more functional than they really were against the Rams. On the surface, Philadelphia scored twice through the air, led 20-10, and had a chance to close out the game late. That sounds like the kind of afternoon you can explain away with a bad fourth-down call or a banged-up offensive line.

But the game itself told a different story.

The Eagles went 0-for-12 on third down and had -5 net passing yards in the second half. They didn't score on any of their last six possessions. Jalen Hurts finished 12-of-27 for 93 yards, and the passing game completely vanished after halftime. Philadelphia’s 20 points came with plenty of help from short fields and special teams.

That’s more than a rough day at the office.

The injuries mattered. The line struggled. Sean Mannion didn’t have enough answers, and Nick Sirianni’s fourth-down decision deserves a closer look. But those explanations can only carry so much weight.

At some point, Hurts has to own a bigger piece of what’s going wrong. After Sunday, it’s getting harder to avoid that conversation.

Third Down Is Where The Excuses Go To Die

Going 0-for-12 on third down doesn’t happen because of one guy. It takes a group effort. The Eagles had protection busts against overload pressure. Rookie right tackle Markel Bell had snaps where he looked unsure about who he was supposed to block. Some routes didn’t give Hurts a clean hot answer. There was a botched exchange near the goal line when Cam Jurgens’ hand hit the ball as he pulled across the formation. On another third down, the Eagles completed a pass to Zach Ertz short of the sticks, only for an illegal-formation penalty to wipe it out anyway.

Nobody can watch those plays honestly and pin all 12 on the quarterback. But nobody should watch them and let him off the hook completely, either.

On Philadelphia’s first third down, Hurts had Dontayvion Wicks open against zone coverage, with a workable pocket, and missed him. On the touchdown to Cooper, he was late and underthrew a ball that should’ve been a pick. When pressure did get home, Hurts repeatedly dropped his eyes and went straight into escape mode. He still has the athleticism to make the first defender miss, and he showed it several times.

The problem was what came next. Instead of resetting and bringing his eyes back downfield, he kept drifting until the play died. Escaping pressure only helps if it creates another chance to do something with the football. Otherwise, it’s just a more entertaining way to end up in the same place.

The Rams blitzed on eight of Hurts’ nine third-down dropbacks, a massive change from how they’d defended third down over the first three weeks. Hurts went 1-for-7 for five yards on those blitzed third-down passes. Los Angeles found something that made Philadelphia work and kept going back to it because they never got a convincing reason to stop.

That’s where the quarterback has to matter. The coaches need better built-in answers. The linemen need to sort out the protection. The receivers need to win quickly. But a franchise quarterback has to recognize where the pressure is coming from and understand what it leaves open. He won’t solve every free rusher. Nobody does. But he has to punish enough of them that a defense starts thinking twice before sending the house. Hurts never made the Rams think twice.

That last possession really highlighted the whole problem. Philadelphia got the ball at their own 27 with 1:05 left, down four. Byron Young sacked Hurts for a seven-yard loss on first down. On third-and-17, Young got him again and forced a fumble that they recovered. Fourth-and-25 came next, and that was that.

It’s easy to say the protection broke. It did. It’s also fair to expect the quarterback to feel the urgency and protect field position. Both things can be true. With Hurts, we’ve spent too much time pretending they can’t be.

The Injuries Matter. They Don’t Explain Everything.

Philadelphia was missing DeVonta Smith, Dallas Goedert, Hollywood Brown, and Fred Johnson before the game even started. Lane Johnson was a late scratch for personal reasons — and now he won't be on the field for the rest of the season after retiring from the NFL. Then Saquon Barkley left with a hamstring injury on the second drive. Bell was making his first NFL start, while Makai Lemon, Darius Cooper, Wicks, and a recently returned Ertz were being asked to carry a passing game that wasn’t built around them.

That matters. Of course it does.

There were plenty of snaps where the receivers just didn’t separate. Mannion's a first-time coordinator four games into the job, and some of the Eagles’ answers to pressure looked like they were being installed in the huddle. If the argument is that Philadelphia failed their quarterback at times, I’m with you.

The problem is when those facts get used to excuse every bad quarterback rep. Hurts isn’t a rookie being asked to keep the ship afloat for a week. He’s a seventh-year player, a two-time Super Bowl starter, a Super Bowl MVP, and the face of the franchise. When the supporting cast gets worse, nobody expects him to turn into Patrick Mahomes and make the whole problem disappear. But there is an expectation that he at least raises the floor.

Get the protection organized. Hit the layups. Find the hot throw. Take the profit before the pocket turns into a fire drill. Give the backup receivers a chance to function.

Against the Rams, that floor disappeared.

Four games into 2026, Fantasy Points Data has Hurts below zero in EPA per dropback and 2.7 percentage points below expectation in completion rate. Their charting also has him pressured on 38 percent of his dropbacks, which is actually lower than his 41.4 percent pressure rate last season. But his pressure-to-sack rate has jumped from 14.7 percent to 23.1 percent.

It’s a small sample, and the line has absolutely been part of the problem. Still, those numbers don’t support the idea that Hurts is simply being swallowed by historically bad protection. The pressure isn’t just getting there. Too much of it is turning into a sack.

Sacks belong to the line and the quarterback. That isn’t some radical idea everywhere else in football. It shouldn’t be one in Philadelphia.

How Many Coordinators Does He Get To Run Through?

Sean Mannion is the fifth offensive coordinator Hurts has worked with since becoming the full-time starter in 2021. That kind of turnover would be brutal for any quarterback, and the Eagles deserve blame for constantly asking Hurts to learn a new language. It also makes it pretty convenient to treat every new coordinator as the latest explanation for whatever’s going wrong.

Shane Steichen helped unlock Hurts in 2022. The Eagles had an elite offensive line, A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, Dallas Goedert, and a dominant quarterback run game that forced defenses to account for every blade of grass. Hurts was brilliant. He threw for 3,701 yards with 22 touchdowns and six interceptions, ran for 760 yards and 13 more scores, and finished second in MVP voting. In Super Bowl LVII, he threw for 304 yards, ran for 70, and accounted for four touchdowns. That season happened. It wasn’t fake, and Hurts doesn’t need to apologize for having great players and good coaching around him. Every elite quarterback gets help.

But 2022 has become the answer for just about every concern that’s popped up since. Brian Johnson took the blame when the offense fell apart late in 2023. Kellen Moore showed up in 2024, leaned into Saquon Barkley and a historically productive rushing attack, and the Eagles won the Super Bowl. Hurts was excellent on the biggest stage and deserved the MVP. Then Moore left, and when Kevin Patullo took over, the passing game just looked stuck in the mud.

Patullo’s offense finished 24th in yards and produced a league-high 28.1 percent three-and-out rate. Hurts still put up a clean-looking stat line — 25 touchdowns, six interceptions, and a 98.5 passer rating — but Philadelphia went out in the wild-card round after scoring only three points off two San Francisco turnovers. Hurts threw for 168 yards.

Patullo was gone. Another reset. Another new voice. Another offseason spent talking about answers. Now Mannion's four games into the job, and the offense already looks like it needs another rescue operation.

Mannion deserves criticism. His third-down plan against the Rams wasn’t remotely good enough. The under-center and play-action additions have looked disjointed. Sirianni's been the constant in the building, too, and his fingerprints don’t disappear just because someone else is holding the call sheet.

Still, how many coordinators can come and go before Hurts becomes more than the guy being affected by the offense? At some point, he has to be one of the people fixing it.

The Hard Part About Evaluating Hurts

The conversation around Hurts gets dumb pretty quickly because everyone wants a clean verdict. Either he’s an elite quarterback who keeps getting let down, or he’s mostly a product of the roster around him. Either the two Super Bowl performances settle the debate forever, or every bad Sunday proves he was never that good.

Hurts is a very good quarterback with some genuinely elite traits. His deep ball can be beautiful. His strength as a runner changes the math in short-yardage situations. He’s tough, poised, and capable of playing his best when the stage is biggest. He’s already quarterbacked two of the best Eagles teams ever, and he wasn’t just along for the ride on either one.

He also has some limitations that Philadelphia's spent years trying to work around. He can be slow getting through a picture after the snap. His internal clock gets shaky when defenses threaten pressure. He’s more comfortable when he can isolate a matchup than when a coverage rotates and asks him to work through his progressions. Once his eyes come down, they don’t always come back up. That doesn’t mean he “can’t read a defense,” which is the lazy line people reach for whenever a quarterback struggles. It means certain defensive plans keep making him uncomfortable, and that discomfort has stuck around through multiple play-callers.

That distinction matters. Hurts has beaten blitzes. Early last season, he was actually much more efficient when defenses sent extra rushers than when they didn’t. The trouble came when teams showed pressure and then changed the picture after the snap. The Rams didn’t exactly hide the last part Sunday. On third down, they brought heat and dared Philadelphia to show they had an answer. They didn’t.

This Is The Standard He Asked For

Hurts kept coming back to “poor execution” after the loss. He wasn’t wrong. The Eagles executed poorly in just about every area.

But “execution” can’t turn into one of those group things that belongs to everybody and nobody. The quarterback is at the center of it. If the protection's botched and the hot answers aren’t clear, Hurts can’t stand on the sideline waiting for the adults to fix the machine. He’s one of the adults.

Hurts also said:

I’ve got to figure it out. However it looks, whatever it means.”

That’s the right answer. Now the football has to back it up.

This isn’t a call to bench him or pretend his best moments never happened. But lets at least judge him by the same franchise-quarterback standard the Eagles use when they fire coordinators rebuild the depth chart around him.

When things are right, Hurts has shown he can take Philadelphia all the way to the promise land and be the best player on the field when he gets there. The next step is showing he can keep the offense functional when the right tackle is a rookie, the top targets are out, and the defense has figured out how to pressure him. That’s where franchise quarterbacks earn the benefit of the doubt they’re given.

But with how things are looking right now, at some point, the blame has to land on Jalen Hurts.

The Eagles take on Trevor Lawrence and the Jaguars in London on Sunday at 9 a.m. ET on NFL Network.

All stats courtesy of Fantasy Points Data.

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