Can Hurts survive Kelce’s retirement?
The NFL scouting combine is over. Free agency effectively begins Monday at noon.
The Eagles have had plenty of time to ponder who will take Jason Kelce’s spot now that he officially retired last Monday. Most likely, they will return right guard Cam Jurgens to his natural center position. They will hope that Tyler Steen, a second-year tackle out of Vanderbilt, can win the right guard job over whatever short-term veteran backup lineman they sign within the next couple of weeks.
Jurgens won’t be as good a snapper or blocker as Kelce, who, at 36, was an All-Pro and Pro Bowl player his last three seasons. But that’s only half of the issue, since calling protections, snapping the ball, and blocking Aaron Donald was only half of Kelce’s job.
The other half: guiding inexperienced, imperfect quarterbacks through the obstacles of flawed offenses and underqualified coaches.
Jalen Hurts is the best and latest example of Kelce’s special gift in this area.
In the end, whether through the draft, moving Jurgens one spot to his left, or signing a veteran, replacing Kelce might be too tall a task in the short term.
It’s impossible to overstate how much Kelce has meant to the Eagles and their quarterbacks since he settled into the job in 2013, which began the Eagles’ true golden era of offense.
Nick Foles went 14-4 in 2013 and 2014 running Chip Kelly’s gimmick offense.
Sam Bradford, in his only season with the Eagles, stepped right in and passed for 3,725 yards in Kelly’s failed scheme, Bradford’s second-highest total for any season.
Carson Wentz was able to start 16 games as a rookie out of North Dakota State in 2016 as Kelce guided him through new coach Doug Pederson’s offense, then made an MVP run in 2017.
Foles, now a backup, replaced an injured Wentz late in 2017 and led the Eagles to their only Super Bowl title.
Wentz, fighting injuries, played well in 2018 and 2019 as coaching problems abounded.
Hurts, a second-round project pick in 2020, took over as the starter in 2021 and led the Eagles to the playoffs; then, in 2022, finished runner-up in both the MVP voting and the Super Bowl; and, in 2023, despite injury problems and poor coaching hires, returned to his second consecutive Pro Bowl.
Since 2013, the Eagles, mainly because of their offense, reached the playoffs seven times and reached the Super Bowl twice. This, despite having three firsttime head coaches, two first-time offensive coordinators, and, of course, Wentz.
The one constant through all of this:
Kelce played center.
But no more.
Storm coming
Kellen Moore will be Hurts’ eighth offensive coordinator in nine years. Since high school, the only time Hurts has enjoyed the same play-caller/offensive coordinator for two seasons in a row was 2021-22, when Shane Steichen accelerated Hurts’ development. He went from a run-first scrambler in 2021 to a polished RPO weapon in 2022. Predictably, when Steichen left to become the Colts’ head coach, Hurts regressed under first-time OC Brian Johnson in 2023.
Now, Hurts will have to learn a hybrid scheme that Moore and head coach Nick Sirianni are concocting. The good news: Moore’s quarterbacks are pretty good against the blitz. The bad news: Hurts wasn’t last year.
Hurts was blitzed on 38.7% of his drop-backs, second-most in the league among full-time starters. His passer rating was 80.5, which was the worst. He has to
prove he can beat it before teams stop coming.
Kelce, in what turned out to be his last Q&A press conference, on locker clean-out day, acknowledged Hurts’ issues:
“There’s going to be some blitz-zero for Jalen Hurts next year. If you have the right mindset you should want that.”
Kelce also offered hope. “There’s holes. There’s [plays] to be made. As long as Jalen has the offseason he should, he should look forward to that.”
Every time a top player moves on or quits, we tend to wring our hands and worry. Aaron Rodgers ably filled Brett Favre’s shoes, and Dak Prescott’s better than Tony Romo. But then, every once in a while, you see Brian Dawkins leave and Quintin Mikell can’t quite do the job as well, and it takes five years before Malcolm Jenkins arrives and locks down the safety position.
Note that Kelce placed the onus on Hurts, not his assumed replacement, Jurgens. That’s because most people assume that the assumed replacement won’t be asked to do what Kelce did so well.
Shady’s aftermath
“You lose Kelce? Your center? It puts more pressure on the quarterback,” said LeSean “Shady” McCoy, the Eagles’ all-time leading rusher and a current analyst on the FS1 show Speak.
McCoy said Tuesday, “In huddles, or on plays, you’ve got to identify the ‘mike’ [middle linebacker] or slide the protections — Kelce did a lot of that. Which leaves the quarterback thinking: “Now, I got to do that. So, I had a bad year. I got to play better. And I got to do all the cadences and the protection stuff ?’ That might have some kind of impact on the offense.”
McCoy assumes that, given Jurgens’ inexperience, Hurts will be responsible for everything:
“Now [as the quarterback] I’m not only worried about the plays that are called, what the defense is running, but also what the pressure is and what the adjustments are, what the route combinations are that I have to tell my wide receivers. [And] now if they’re bringing pressure from ‘hot,’ I have to alert my offensive line and my receivers. That’s a lot going on in 30 seconds.”
Hurts has started 56 games, including playoffs; Jurgens?
12. McCoy played in 177. Kelce started 205.
McCoy advocated signing a center, but none of the current crop of free-agent centers is as talented as Jurgens. So, expect growing pains.
“I’ve seen so many different pressures that I’m never surprised. Jason Kelce’s seen more pressures than I’ve seen. He’s never going to be surprised,” McCoy said. “You get a young center in there and ask him to have all these responsibilities? He’s going to be surprised.”
So will Hurts.