Jalen Hurts maturation is a fun watch and should have been expected

It’s hard to believe that this hasn’t already happened this season, but for the first time in his young career, Jalen Hurts has won the NFC Offensive Player of the Week Award. His performance in Week 12 versus the Green Bay Packers on Sunday Night Football may be a revelation to some, but it’s just further confirmation of what Philadelphia Eagles fans already know.

Jalen Hurts has proven himself to be a franchise quarterback. He was asked to take the next step forward as both a leader and a passer, and he has. He owns the temperament necessary to be an NFL quarterback and a guy that a team can build a franchise around. Oh, and there’s one other thing worth mentioning.

The Eagles are winning games because of Jalen Hurts not in spite of him. We should have seen this coming.

Here is Inside The Iggles‘ version of complete and total transparency. We knew that we loved the way that Jalen Hurts is wired. We knew that his having to adjust to having a new offensive coordinator every year since his high school days was partially the cause of any issues that we were seeing with his growth. It’s for those reasons that we knew having some stability and familiarity this time around would help him tremendously.

The Eagles added A.J. Brown to the nest to ensure the supporting cast around him was formidable, and once we weighed everything we saw this offseason (and that he was protected by the game’s best offensive line), we expected that he’d take a huge step forward in his third NFL season, his second full season as the starter.

In short, we knew Jalen Hurts was going to impress. We just didn’t know that he would impress us as much as he has. The Philadelphia Eagles are winning games because of his efforts instead of winning despite them, and here’s the best part. He’s only going to get better.

The Birds have found their QB1. All of those draft picks Howie Roseman stockpiled, those picks we thought that Philadelphia would use to pursue another quarterback if theirs failed, can be used to address other needs now.

Philly has its quarterback, and they have a good one. Those first-round draft choices can be used to find a game-changer at other positions.