Jalen Hurts just made his 14th NFL start as an NFL quarterback with the Philadelphia Eagles and Joe Giglio, interestingly, compared those 14 starts with Carson Wentz's first 14 starts as an Eagle.
Hurts has actually been much better than Wentz to start his career.
While Wentz had slightly more passing yards, Hurts is dominant in the rushing category and has a much better TD-INT ratio, while both led the Eagles to 5-9 records over those 14 games.
Both Hurts and Wentz were leading rebuilding Eagles' teams with new coaches to start their careers. Hurts took over for Wentz at the end of last season, but effectively, this is basically his rookie season as the team's starting QB under new coach Nick Sirianni, while Wentz was playing for Doug Pederson.
And although these stats favor Hurts, to be fair, Wentz's best career season came in his second NFL season, in starts 17 through 29. In 2017, Wentz led the Eagles to an 11-2 record throwing for 33 touchdowns and just seven interceptions before tearing his ACL. Of course, the Eagles went on to win the Super Bowl that year with Nick Foles taking over for Wentz.
So needless to say, Hurts will have his work cut out for him to match that effort in starts 17 through 29, but so far he's shown promise, especially of late.
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On Tuesday's 94WIP Morning Show, Sirianni spoke about Hurts' improvement as a QB.
"The play that he made to Dallas Goedert on the 3rd-and-12," Sirianni told Angelo Cataldi when asked about Hurts' progress. "What he did was, it was good protection, but he had to move a little bit in the pocket and he slid, he kept great ball security. Man, he's doing such a great job of taking care of the football in terms of interceptions, but I know last year he had a couple fumbles to his name. And he's done such a good job of protecting that football when he's a runner or when he's in the pocket."
Despite the ascension of Hurts at just 23-years-old, the reports continue to trickle out that the Eagles aren't convinced Hurts is their franchise QB. Earlier this season, Philadelphia was rumored to be after Deshaun Watson. Now, inklings of interest in Russell Wilson for next season continue to surface, first from ESPN's Chris Mortensen and then this week from Peter King.
At 4-6, Hurts and the Eagles find themselves in the midst of a playoff race. The Eagles have an extremely favorable schedule going forward, facing the Saints, Giants twice, Jets, and WFT twice over their next six games, finishing with the Dallas Cowboys in Week 18—who could potentially be resting their starters with the division title locked up.