PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Jalen Hurts has a lot to improve on, and Jalen Reagor may need to change teams, says former Eagles wide receiver Jason Avant.
Avant shared his thoughts on two of the most significant topics of discussion in the Eagles' offseason on NBC Sports Philadelphia's "Takeoff with John Clark" podcast.
Hurts and Reagor just completed their second season in the league. The team has publicly committed to run Hurts as starting quarterback next season. It is not clear what lies in store for wide receiver Reagor.
Avant played with the Eagles for eight seasons, and he was a coaching intern with them for the 2020 season after becoming a part of the NFL's Bill Walsh Diversity Fellowship. His coaching internship was concurrent with Hurts' and Reagor's rookie season. He knows them, he says.
"Jalen Reagor, Jalen Hurts — I love them,” Avant said. “I know both those guys. I love them as people and I want them to succeed.”
That love didn't keep Avant from giving Clark "an honest and true perspective" of Hurts and Reagor.
"The Eagles love Jalen Hurts," Avant said, "and they love him because of his intangibles. It's not necessary because of what he's shown as an NFL quarterback at this moment. He's shown some good things, right — running for 10 touchdowns this year, 784 yards — but that's not necessarily quarterbacking."
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Avant said he thinks Hurts has several things to improve, including ball placement and reading the defense.
"You take away that first read, he's going to struggle," Avant said. "If you give him different looks on the back end, he's gonna struggle. That's just common knowledge."
Apart from the "intangibles," Avant said he believes the Eagles are betting on Hurts because of his ability to get better. However, he wonders whether they will be patient enough with him.
"The problem is not if he's going to get better. The problem is: Will he have enough time to?" Avant said. “Because you're taking a guy that was a predominant runner at Alabama, who found some success [also at Oklahoma], [with Oklahoma head coach] Lincoln Riley, bring it to the NFL. He's still in the growth-and-maturity phase of this. And it usually takes two, three years in order to get a guy to the position that you want him to. And will the Eagles fans, this city, the general manager and the team, from a realistic standpoint, give Jalen Hurts enough time in order to develop? I don't know if that's the case. Will the time run out before his development is mature? I don't think the Eagles are gonna wait that long, and I think it's more than a one- or two-year thing."
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Hurts showed enough potential, and plenty of leadership qualities, to lead the Eagles to the playoffs in his first season as a starter. Reagor, however, continued to lack the production expected of a first-round pick — whether as wide receiver or returner.
"I think that Jalen Reagor may need a change of scenery," Avant told Clark.
Head coach Nick Sirianni has publicly referred to Reagor as the team's No. 3 receiver. Sirianni and General Manager Howie Roseman acknowledged Reagor needs to produce more, and they need to help him do so. But is it too late?
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"This city is tough, in and of itself. And then, when you have shown yourself to be a person that they can get to — not just the fans, but outside people, in general — with your tweets and with you social posts and with some of the comments that are made in the media and some of your body language and things of that nature, I just think that it has gotten to him in Philadelphia,” Avant said.
“I don't necessarily know if this is the best, you know, city for his personality type.”
Avant said there is more to it than the public frustration and noise that has been directed toward Reagor. He said it's fair to question whether it was a stretch for the Eagles to select Reagor in the 2020 first round.
Some of it is confidence, and some of it is taking Reagor’s game beyond his athleticism, he explained.
"He's been able to get away with being the best athlete for so long. And when you get to NFL being the best athlete is impossible. It's the upper echelon, the most elite of the elite. So you have to have technique. You have to have some subtlety, some tricks, you have to have a bunch of development. And I think that it's just caught up to him.
There is plenty of time before next season, much of which will continue to be filled with chatter about Hurts and Reagor. Only time will tell what happens next.