What These QB Lists Keep Missing About Jalen Hurts

The summer can at times be a bit of a black hole for NFL content. There is not new news every day to report, so writers and content creators around the league need to fall back on the old standard, lists. The best QBs, best RBs, best DTs, and so on. It feels like every week there is some new controversy because this person on this network ranked the QBs, and they had Jalen Hurts as only the 9th best QB in the league.

It has gotten stale arguing with these people who disrespect Hurts. So I am not going to call out some particular list or talking head. We are not going to dive into their reasoning. Instead, I am interested in why so many people see Hurts the way they do, and what they are missing.

Because we all know how special Hurts is. But if you don't watch him every week, you can miss it. The stats do not tell the story in this case. You can't look at his passing yards and know anything about who Jalen Hurts is as a QB. So let's dive into what these writers, talking heads, and others keep missing about what makes Hurts so special.

Jalen Hurts is not often mentioned as one of the best deep-ball QBs in the NFL. People look at the low total yards/ passing TDs and assume he is not uncorking the ball very often. But look just a little bit deeper than surface level, and you can see what these QB lists often miss.

To start, only 3 QBs had more TDs of 20+ air yards than Hurts. Lamar Jackson, Sam Darnold, and Justin Herbert. But all 3 of those guys had at least 23 more deep throw attempts than Hurts. With only 50 passes of 20+ air yards, Hurts ranked 18th in the NFL. But he still racked up more deep shot TDs than most of his peers.

He is also 4th in Yards Per Attempt on deep passes (14.7), 4th in completion rate on deep passes (46%), and is tied for the 3rd fewest interceptions (3) on deep passes.

Also, forget all the stats, and just watch him. He throws a near-perfect deep ball. Having two great WRs certainly helps, but more often than not, Hurts throws the ball in the perfect spot to let AJ Brown or Devonta Smith make a play on the ball.

What would you rather have, the guy who looks great in the regular season and wilts under pressure, or the guy who does his best work when the lights come on? Hurts is without a doubt the latter. 3 of his best games ever came in the 2 Super Bowls, and vs the Commanders in the NFC Championship game.

Hurts has the 6th-best Pass Rating ever in the Super Bowl (109.4). He has the best completion rate (73.3%). He is also 7th in YPA in Super Bowl history (8.8). Not to mention his 7 total TDs, on top of the game-tying 2-point conversion in the 1st Super Bowl, after scoring the TD on the same drive.

And this is not one good game. Hurts has now played in the Super Bowl twice in just 4 years as the starter, and honestly looked better than Patrick Mahomes both times.

This goes beyond calling him a winner. People can't just use his great team to downplay his role in the Super Bowls. Hurts himself carried the team in those games, and if the defense got a single stop in the 2nd half of the 2022 Super Bowl, we might be talking about Hurts as a 2-time Super Bowl champion right now.

Passing yards are nice. I will happily sacrifice regular-season stats if it means I get someone who gets it done in January /February.

A TD is a TD. Passing or rushing, you should be judged by how many points you generate for your team. And since 2022, only 1 QB has more total TDs than Jalen Hurts, and that is Josh Allen. But Hurts has scored more than Mahomes, more than Jared Goff, more than Lamar Jackson, and much more than Justin Herbert. By the way, they all played in more games than Hurts.

I know what you might be saying. How many of them are on the Tush Push? My response is, who cares? If the Tush Push was so easy, every single one of these QBs would have as many TDs from it as Hurts does. The fact that it is mostly only Jalen Hurts and Josh Allen scoring off it at a high clip tells you that they do something the rest of the NFL can't.

It is not typical, and people discount it for that reason. But between the playoffs and the regular season, almost no one has produced as many points for their team as Jalen Hurts has. Why does how it looks matter?

Hurts might never get the respect he deserves. Many talking heads don't see him that way because his accomplishments fly in the face of what they think a great QB should look like. But at this point, who cares what they think? Why let their opinion bother us?

We know Hurts is great. Hurts has proven it over and over again. The Eagles got to parade down Broad Street. Only 6 active QBs have ever won a Super Bowl, and 3 of them, Russell Wilson, Aaron Rodgers, and Joe Flacco, could be playing their final season in the NFL. Another, Matthew Stafford, is likely not far off from retirement. Hurts is also 1 of only 2 active QBs to beat Mahomes in the playoffs.

So let people make their lists, let them continue to overlook Jalen. We can rest easy knowing that Hurts will get the job done more often than any of those prototypical QBs. No list of top qbs, or ranking of different traits in a QB, will change that Hurts has something almost all of those QBs lack, not just a Super Bowl ring, but the iron will to go out and get one.