August 06, 2026
Colleen Claggett/For PhillyVoice
Jalen Hurts' grasp of another new offense is once again a key sticking point in Eagles training camp.
Jalen Hurts has kept the Eagles' offense moving through training camp, in the way most were hoping for.
Receivers are moving in motion, Hurts looks just fine operating from the gun or from under center, and when he does take the snap from the latter, he can fake a deceptive play-action handoff and start rolling out with plenty of poise.
The first week of training camp, and the first for new offensive coordinator Sean Mannion's system, was a bit bumpy, granted.
But through the second, Hurts has been hitting Dontayvion Wicks dragging across the field, he's threaded passes through the seam to a diving Darius Cooper, he zipped a contested ball over the middle and to the goal line for Elijah Moore (a wideout much further down the depth chart) to haul in, and after all of it, he still has DeVonta Smith with some of the sharpest routes in the league as his No. 1 option and ultimate failsafe.
And oh yeah, Hurts has been keeping it and running in spots, too.
The Eagles' offense isn't a finished product yet, but it looks like it's starting to come together down at the Jefferson Health Training Complex. At the least, it looks functional, and far less predictable, which is already a dramatic (and welcomed) shift from the uninventive mess under former offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo that left the Eagles stalling out in the Wild Card from trying to win every game 10-7.
And Hurts, ever at the core of all of it, is looking a lot more dynamic again in the new system, or at least he's getting there.
"I like to think of the term calibrating," Hurts told the press after Wednesday's practice in South Philly. "This is a time where we're kind of putting it together and finding out who we are.
"I think it's been very good to be able to compete against the defense, who has a built and set identity for who they are. Then, obviously, us on this end, we've got a lot of new pieces, an entirely new approach and M.O., philosophy to our offense. So being able to put that together and make that our own, I'm excited about where we are."
Which probably says a lot, because Hurts rarely says anything of note at surface level, yet somehow always seems to leave something between the lines.
Jalen Hurts and Saquon Barkley are going to be running the Eagles' offense from under center way more under new coordinator Sean Mannion.
The Eagles' offense devolved into a rudderless disaster last season.
Defending a Super Bowl title, the team got by for a while on the back of Vic Fangio's suffocating defense and a sheer advantage in overall talent, but by the back half of the season, the Eagles' offensive playcalling had become painfully predictable to anyone watching, which made it painfully easy for opposing defenses to read, and what certainly wasn't helped by a banged up O-line and constantly-looming A.J. Brown drama.
Three-and-out sequences that brought on the punt team no sooner than when the defense left for the sideline became the aggravating norm, and so did a fractured relay of play calls, where the Eagles often didn't break the huddle until there were 10 seconds left on the play clock and where they had to scramble to hike the ball in time.
It got to a point where the defense had to routinely steal the Eagles games, to a point where, somehow, Hurts could go an entire half without completing a pass, and at the most dejecting, where the offense would call a frantic timeout late, just to run a dead-on-arrival Four Verts call to lose to what proved to be a very beatable 49ers team in the playoffs.
Underachieving felt like a massive understatement.
Patullo was fired because he had to be, and Brown, after months of having the writing on the wall, was traded to New England because it was obvious he didn't want to be in Philadelphia anymore.
But through that whole offseason, too, Hurts and head coach Nick Sirianni had to take on another storm of criticism.
This trio of Hurts, Sirianni, and Patullo did not work.
Sirianni, with general manager Howie Roseman, was left commissioning another search for a more forward-thinking offensive coordinator who could handle the playcalling, after being left to his own devices with his own internal hire following a Super Bowl appearance left the team falling woefully short of some high expectations. Eventually, he landed on Mannion from Green Bay.
But then Hurts fell under an intense microscope among local media and national pundits for months, for a long list of reasons on a long spectrum of validity.
Not even a full 12 months removed from winning Super Bowl MVP after last season ended in January, there were rumors and "leaks" from seemingly everywhere, it felt like, about Hurts having a sudden reluctance to run the football, to throw over the middle, to take snaps from under center, and to learn and run more complicated offenses.
These points were beaten into the ground in daily sportstalk for months, to the point where if you didn't know any better, Hurts would come off as a borderline draft bust, not a QB who has been to the playoffs every year as a starter, and has already won one Super Bowl and was maybe two snaps shy of winning another a couple of years prior.
Jalen Hurts is looking better throwing the ball as camp progresses.
Still, it all set up a narrative that this season was going to be a pivotal one for Hurts, who in Year 7 would need to prove himself, again, under yet another new OC in Mannion, who was promised to bring the Eagles more up to speed with the modern version of the West Coast offense popularized by the Rams' Sean McVay and the 49ers' Kyle Shanahan – which, in turn, would require Hurts to throw more consistently.
And yeah, it was bumpy at first when camp opened last week – a Vic Fangio defense will do that to any QB.
But now that the routine has settled a bit, so has Hurts, who has been doing all the changes asked of him under Mannion's scheme, while looking pretty efficient doing it.
"I think you've heard me say that a lot over the years, about understanding in-depth what am I asked to do, and just the process of inductive reasoning," Hurts said. "Really asking and being curious, letting curiosity lead me and asking questions so I can gain full depth of what I'm asked to do, what the running back is supposed to do, the tight end, how the O-line is treating this, what are the complements to this? Just kind of finding the flow for how I should see the game, and then how ultimately the playcaller is seeing the game, too, from a sequencing standpoint and an M.O. standpoint.
"I think asking those questions gives you great understanding, and I've been very excited about the conversations that Sean and I have been able to have."
And it's all a far cry from a year ago, when neither Hurts nor anyone, really, could tell you what the Eagles' offense was supposed to be.
"I like **** like that." pic.twitter.com/YZM2ISlhX0
— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) July 30, 2026
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