Rumors surface of intriguing pre-game Jalen Hurts, A.J. Bown discussion

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the Philadelphia Eagles‘ first drive of the 2022 NFL preseason and Jalen Hurts perfect six-for-six passing display, one where he racked up a perfect 158.3 passer rating is this. Somewhere and somehow, people are still going to have something to pick apart in his game.

Of come on! You know it’s true!

Philly’s first-team offense took the opening kickoff and drove 80 yards to paydirt, overcoming a false-start penalty by Lane Johnson, a vicious late hit on QB1 that drew a 15-yard personal-foul penalty, and a phantom holding call on Jordan Mailata in the process.

The first-team defense was up to the task as well, as Kyzir White picked off a Zach Wilson toss and returned the ball to the New York Jets 20-yard line to set up an immediate red-zone opportunity for Gardner Minshew and company.

The Birds dropped game one by a 24-21 margin, but no one cares. The first-team offense shined. The reserves struggled but battled to a late-game go-ahead score as Reid Sinnett connected with Kennedy Brooks.

Sure, they were unable to hold on. Again, who cares? Who would have known that one of the more intriguing stories coming out of this one would be a pre-game conversation between A.J. Brown and Jalen Hurts?

Wait! Did Jalen Hurts say that he wouldn’t throw the ball to A.J. Brown?

We’ve all seen the game by now, whether you watched live or had to save this one to your cloud DVRs for later viewing. If you’re like most of us, you’re still hungry for more. One drive by the first-team offense felt like an appetizer. It was delicious. There just wasn’t enough of it.

As mentioned, Hurts was perfect. The Birds didn’t attempting a single running play, and QB1 spread the ball around, hitting Quez Watkins twice, Miles Sanders, and Jack Stoll before connecting with Dallas Goedert for the game’s first score.

Absent from the stat sheet was A.J. Brown, who later stated the following “Going into the game, Jalen told me he wasn’t going to throw me the ball. That’s how it was going to go.” Check out Jeff McLane’s tweet.

That’s interesting. We like it though! QB1 answered a few questions by employing the strategy

Heading into Week 1’s preseason game, part of the criticism of what had transpired during some of the Eagles’ later practices of training camp was Jalen Hurts was becoming too reliant on getting the ball to one guy… A.J. Brown. There was some debate about whether or not this was an issue. After all, there was a need to establish some chemistry between the quarterback and all of his receivers, not just one. What if opposing defenses simply determined that they’d take Brown away? What then?

As it turns out, the third-year signal-caller knows what he was doing. Hurts was phenomenal in Week 1. Sure, people will say this is ‘only a preseason game’ and bring up the usual takes like ‘Hey! It’s only the Jets’, but if you’re a Birds fan, rest easy this weekend.

It doesn’t get much better than what we saw from QB1 and the first-team offense. Sure, you can’t have the penalties, but we trust that Lane Johnson and Jordan Mailata will be sharper. All in all, we’ll give the first-team unit an A-. Next week, they’ll travel to Cleveland for joint practices before meeting the Browns on Sunday, but for now we can give Philadelphia the ‘so far, so good’ stamp for a job well done.