As of January 19, 2022, it appears Jalen Hurts will be the starting quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles in 2022.
At their end-of-season press conference, Eagles GM Howie Roseman said Hurts, who led the team to the playoffs in his first year as a starter, had done enough to be Philly’s QB1 next season.
“We talk about [QB] Jalen [Hurts] and the growth he had, really as a first-year starter and second-year player and leading this team to the playoffs,” Roseman said. “I’m tremendously impressed by his work ethic and his leadership. The last time we talked was during camp, and we said we wanted to see him take the bull by the horn, and he certainly did that.”
The second-year quarterback had one of his worst performances of the season against the Buccaneers on Sunday, which seemed to have opened the door for the Eagles to look in another direction. However, Roseman, who has three first-round picks to play with in the upcoming draft, feels he needs to build a better team around the 23-year-old Hurts.
“I think for us, we have to do whatever we can to continue to help him develop,” Roseman said about Hurts. “And how do we do that? By surrounding him with really good players, players who continue to grow. That’s a huge part of developing; they grow. How they are in their second year is not how they are going to be in year four, five, six, and seven. And they are also products of the people around them. That’s on us to continue to build this team.”
This season, Philadelphia finished the season 9-8 and was the seventh-seed in NFC. Going forward, Roseman wants the Eagles to be in a position to have home playoff games.
“We are not happy about the fact that our season ended in the playoffs,” he said. “We want to build a team that has home playoff games, gets to play in front of our fan base, and really build a team that gets a bye.
“Those opportunities, those assets you talk about, allow us to continue to build and really helps us add good players to this team. Our job is to look at everything, to evaluate every position, every player. We do that not only for right now in this moment, but we also do it, so we have information when players become available at any position.”
A lot can happen from now until the start of next season. Hurts is the guy for now, but if the Eagles could still upgrade the position, I’m sure Roseman will do everything in his power to do so.
