In Roob’s Observations: A peek into Jalen Hurts’ insane competitiveness originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
A glimpse into Jalen Hurts’ insane level of competitiveness, thoughts about Isaiah Rodgers’ future and the Eagles’ remarkable record against playoff teams.
We’re a day out from free agency, and it’s crazy how fast offseason roster building starts when you play in the Super Bowl.
The parade was 23 days ago and here we are, starting the process of building the 2025 Eagles.
As we count down the final hours before free agency kicks off the offseason, here’s this week’s batch of 10 Random Eagles Offseason Observations.
1. Man, I love that little vignette in the Super Bowl Mic’d Up video the Eagles released with Jalen Hurts showing disappointment at leaving the game with the Eagles up 40-6 midway through the fourth quarter. I don’t know if anything better illustrates what a ferocious competitor Hurts really is. The score was 40-6 and he didn’t want to leave the game. It was 40-6! His teammates were congratulating each other on the sideline, soaking in the moment, celebrating the impending win together. And Hurts was still in killer mode, wanting to run it up on the Chiefs. He wanted to embarrass the team that beat the Eagles in the Super Bowl two years earlier. He wanted half a hundred. Nick Sirianni has too much respect for football etiquette and for Andy Reid to do that, and as we saw the Chiefs scored two touchdowns in the final three minutes to make the score a little more respectable. All Hurts wanted was to do what Patrick Mahomes was doing and keep trying to score points. Instead of feeling jubilation at leading the Eagles to their second Super Bowl championship in eight years and being on top of the football world, Hurts looked frustrated and disappointed to come out of the game. That’s a guy who doesn’t just want to beat the other team, he wants to destroy them. Humiliate them. That brief video snippet is a real window into Hurts’ killer instinct. You’ve just got to love that mentality.
2. I’m curious to see what will happen with Isaiah Rodgers, who played very well when he had to fill in this pat season, usually for Darius Slay. After being forced to sit out all of 2023, Rodgers played 328 defensive snaps, was targeted 28 times and allowed just 13 completions for 118 yards. His 4.2 yards per target was tied for lowest in the NFL among 125 corners who faced at least 20 targets. He also ranked 4th in opposing completion percentage (46.4), 12th in opposing yards per completion (9.1) and 34th with an 82.1 defensive passer rating, I think there could be teams out there who see Rodgers as a potential starter based on those analytics and his ideal size and speed, and certainly the Eagles are in no position to get into a bidding war for Rodgers (or anybody else). Kelee Ringo is five years younger, will cost a lot less since he’s still on his rookie deal and has a ton of upside. The only way Rodgers comes back is if the offers just don’t materialize once he hits the open market and the Eagles can get him cheap again. I just don’t think that’s going to happen.
3. It used to be that wild-card teams – or more accurately, teams that had to play in the wild-card round – had virtually no shot of winning a Super Bowl. The NFL instituted the wild-card system in 1970 in conjunction with AFL-NFL merger realignment with one wild-card team per conference. In 1978 a second wild-card team per conference was added, and in 1990 a third wild-card team was added in each conference. In 2002, the NFL expanded to four divisions per conference with two wild-card teams but still four teams in each conference playing in the wild-card round. That system remained until 2020, when the league eliminated the 1st-round bye for the No. 2 seed and expanded to three wild-card round games per conference with three division winners and three wild-card teams per conference playing in the first weekend of the playoffs. So that’s the history of the wild-card round, and from 1970 through 1996 – 27 years – only two teams that played in the wild-card round – the 1980 Raiders and 1982 Washington – won the Super Bowl. And that 1982 season had an expanded postseason format because a strike cut the regular season to nine games. As recently as 2004, only two other teams won a Super Bowl after playing four games – the 1997 Broncos and 2000 Ravens. So from 1970 through 2004, only four of 35 Super Bowl winners played in the wild-card round. Since then, 10 of the 20 Super Bowl champs have been teams that played in the wild-card round, including four of the last five, with the 2024 Eagles obviously being the most recent example. You would think that’s because you have all these 2 seeds that would have otherwise had a bye who are almost as good as the 1 seed, but that’s not the case. The Bucs in 2020 were a 5 seed, the Rams in 2021 were a 4 seed and the Chiefs in 2023 were a 3 seed. The only No. 1 seeds to win the Super Bowl in the last eight years are the 2017 Eagles and 2023 Chiefs. Why is this happening? Why over the last 20 years have wild-card-round teams won as many Super Bowls as teams with a 1st-round bye? I think a big part of it is that teams understand better how to prepare for the physical demands of a four-game postseason. Teams are now making being healthy and fresh for the start of the playoffs more of a priority than selling out for the No. 1 seed. And there’s something to be said for having momentum on your side. In a lot of cases, the best wild-card teams are going into the playoffs on a roll while the No. 1 seeds have things locked up early and coast into the postseason and maybe lose their edge. Whatever the reason, it really should change the way we look at the postseason. That 1st-round bye is nice, but over the last two decades teams without it have been just as likely to take home the Lombardi as teams with it.
4. Jalen Hurts threw 91 passes in the 2024 postseason. Only 26 were incomplete.
5. When Dave Zangaro and I put together our Stay or Go series, one of the guys I really agonized over was Avonte Maddox. If you just look at the first month of the season, yeah, he wasn’t very good as the starting slot, and the success Cooper DeJean in that role had coming out of the bye was astonishing. But it’s a lot more complicated than just Maddox was bad and DeJean was great. Maddox’s role changed after the bye, and at different times he backed up the slot and eventually became the third safety and also was an emergency outside corner. And from Week 5 on, he played 145 snaps and had a 77.4 defensive passer rating, which believe it or not was the best among all Eagles corners – all Eagles corners – the last 13 weeks of the regular season. It’s not easy to handle getting demoted, but Maddox did it with class and professionalism and when he was called on after the bye he responded and played well. Maddox is a free agent, but I like the idea of bringing him back. He’ll be cheap, he can back up anywhere in the secondary, his coaches and teammates love him – secondary coach Christian Parker told me in New Orleans he’s his favorite player he’s ever been around – and he’s got a year in Vic Fangio’s system so there’s lots of familiarity there. I think he’d be a good guy to keep around.
6. Jordan Mailata has started 78 games, the most by a player drafted by the Eagles in the seventh round or later since two 1986 picks – 8th-round selection Seth Joyner and 9th-rounder Clyde Simmons – started 118 and 113 games from 1986 through 1993. Mailata’s 78 starts are most by an Eagles 7th-round pick since Harold Carmichael started 167 from 1971 through 1983.
7. Remember how T.J. Edwards signed with the Bears 15 minutes into free agency in 2023? Josh Sweat is my candidate to sign elsewhere in the opening hours (or minutes) of free agency on Monday. I think his value is so far out of the Eagles’ range – I’m guessing $20 to $22 million per year on a four-year deal – that they won’t even be in the mix. Sweat has had an up-and-down seven years with the Eagles, but he’s a 27-year-old edge rusher who’s one of only eight players in the NFL with at least 6.0 sacks in each of the last five seasons who just had 2 ½ sacks and seven pressures in a Super Bowl win and is a high-effort guy against the run and guys like that are in tremendous demand. He’s the only edge on the market with that sort of resume. I wouldn’t be shocked if the Cards make a run at Sweat. Jonathan Gannon coached Sweat here in 2021 and 2022, and the Cards haven’t had anybody with more than six sacks since J.J. Watt in his final season back in 2022. And the Cards have a ton of cap space to make this sort of deal. It will be tough to see him go, but I’m not sure the Eagles can avoid it.
8A. In 2023, the Eagles ranked 7th in the NFL in scoring, 8th in yards per game, 3rd on third down and 4th in first downs per game and the offensive coordinator got fired. In 2024, the Eagles ranked 7th in scoring, 8th in yards per game, 10th on third down and 7th in first downs per game, and the offensive coordinator got a head coaching job.
8B. That said, a change was necessary after the 2023 collapse, but I also think Brian Johnson was a bit of a scapegoat. The real issue was Nick Sirianni’s involvement in the offense and the clunky relationship between all the offensive coaches. And when Sirianni made the decision to step away things started operating more efficiently and more productively. I think Kellen Moore did a good but not great job as a play caller during the regular season (and a fantastic job in the postseason), but the most important thing was that the offensive coaching roles were clearly spelled out and Moore had the freedom to run the offense the way he wanted, which Johnson never had. And the success the Eagles had this past season is why Sirianni will never call plays again. He loves his current role as football CEO and what that allows him to do both during the week and on game day. He can truly oversee everything, and he’s really good at it. And I give him credit for making that decision to step away from running the offense on a daily basis because I’m sure it wasn’t an easy one. And it’s humbling. But the Eagles don’t have the season they had if Sirianni hadn’t changed his role so dramatically. Sirianni is always telling his players to put the team before their own goals and aspirations, and in this case that’s precisely what he did.
9. Including the regular season and playoffs, the Eagles were 9-2 this past season against teams that made the playoffs. That ties the most wins ever in a season by a team against playoff teams. The 1997 Packers (9-2), 2022 Chiefs (9-2) and 2024 Chiefs (9-3) also won nine games (and all three teams had Andy Reid on their coaching staff). The only other teams with winning records against playoff teams in 2024 were the Chiefs (9-3), Ravens (8-4) and Lions (6-3). Previous Eagles winning seasons vs. playoff teams: 1944 (1-0-1), 1945 (2-1), 1949 (2-0), 1960 (1-0), 1989 (4-2), 2003 (4-3), 2004 (4-3), 1980 (5-4), 2017 (5-1), 2008 (6-3) and 2023 (6-3). So they’re 22-7 the last three years vs. winning teams.
10. The Eagles’ 34-0 lead in the third quarter of the Super Bowl was the 5th-largest lead at any point in any Super Bowl and the 2nd-largest shutout advantage ever behind only the Seahawks’ 36-0 lead over the Broncos on the way to a 43-8 win in 2013. Their 24-0 halftime lead was the 2nd-largest ever, behind Washington’s 35-10 lead over the Broncos in Super Bowl XXII in 1987. Here’s a look at the largest Super Bowl leads (only listing the largest one per game):
45 points – 49ers 55, Broncos 10, final score [SB XXIV, 1989]
41 points – Bears 44, Patriots 3, 3rd quarter [SB XX, 1985]
36 points – Seahawks 36, Broncos 0, 3rd quarter [SB XLVIII, 2013]
35 points – Cowboys 52, Bills 17, final score [SB XXVII, 1992]
34 points – Eagles 34, Chiefs 0, 3rd quarter [SB LIX, 2024]
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