Eagles QB Jalen Hurts is more explosive than you may have imagined

Here are a few statements that would fall in the category of being ‘obvious’. Jalen Hurts isn’t as tall as Randall Cunningham. The Philadelphia Eagles‘ QB1 of the moment doesn’t have the ‘rifle’ that Ron Jaworski had. He clearly doesn’t launch a deep ball as effortlessly as Michael Vick, nor is he as fast as the lefty was in his prime.

All of that’s fair, right? Those are things that we can agree upon, correct? It’s not like we’re going to knock someone for the inability to beat Vick in a foot race.

All that’s been said to say this. Jalen is his own man, but any discussion on the ways that he differs from so many Eagles quarterbacks that we’ve gotten to know over the years leads us to other theories about his game, theories that suggest, while there may not be a rocket masquerading as his right arm, we have seen him display the touch and ability to get the ball where it needs to go sometimes.

Hurts’ intangibles differ from the ones that Randall displayed. He may never be as entertaining an interview as Donovan McNabb, but there’s one trait he has that mirrors his predecessors. No one will cringe when they hear his name and the word ‘explosion’ in the same sentence.

NFL Next Gen Stats names Jalen Hurts as 2021’s most explosive runner.

It seems strange to say, in a league that has given us Derrick Henry, Lamar Jackson, Jonathan Taylor, and the like, that Jalen Hurts would top those guys as the game’s best runner, but that’s exactly the case per NFL.com’s Nick Shook.

Recently, he pieced together a list featuring the ten most explosive runners of the 2021-2022 NFL season. To meet the criteria, players had to have notched 100 carries or more while posting 20 carries or more of ten yards or more. The defining metric comes down to the total number and percentage of 15-plus mph runs.

As mentioned, Philly’s QB1 topped the list, stacking 29 runs of ten or more yards (20.9% of his total amount of scrambles met that metric) and 78 runs that eclipsed 15 miles per hour (56.1% of his runs fall in that category).

Here are a few more of Shook’s notes on Hurts:

"Philadelphia found itself in a bit of an offensive rut in 2021 before reimagining itself as a run-first, dual-threat attack with Hurts leading the way. From there, the Eagles, well, took flight, with Hurts using his abilities to keep defenses guessing. The shift in philosophy produced the league’s top rushing offense.Hurts led the league in designed QB runs (72), rushing yards gained on such runs (377), and yards per carry on such runs (5.2, min. 30 such runs). In addition, his 146 rush yards gained over expected, eight touchdowns scored and 11 first downs gained over expected on such runs led the league. So did Hurts’ +20 rushing expected points added on designed QB runs."

If you’re interested. The rest of the list falls as follows from the second-ranked player to the tenth: Jonathan Taylor, Dalvin Cook, Nick Chubb, Josh Allen, Joe Mixon, Lamar Jackson, Elijah Mitchell, Antonio Gibson, and Alvin Kamara.

Strangely, the aforementioned Derrick Henry didn’t make the list. That’s hard to imagine, but what’s that saying? People lie and numbers don’t? Either way, the hope is, with the addition of guys like A.J. Brown and Grant Calcaterra, Jalen Hurts won’t have to tuck the ball and run as much.

Calcaterra is going to surprise a lot of people in 2022. You just wait and see. Hopefully, his presence, along with that of other stars like DeVonta Smith and Dallas Goedert, will place Jalen Hurts in a position in which scrambling isn’t the most needed aspect of his game. The goal is for him not to top this list after the coming season.