It’s hard to win in the NFL when you turn the football over, and in Sunday’s night loss against the Cowboys, the Eagles had three turnovers, all in Cowboys’ territory, and all were fumbles, including one by quarterback Jalen Hurts.
Last season, Hurts had eight turnovers; this season, Hurts has struggled to protect the football. He has 15 turnovers, tied with two other players for most turnovers this season.
In the last seven games, Hurts has fumbled seven times and lost four of those fumbles. On Tuesday, Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni was asked about how the team can fix Hurts’ fumbling issues.
“There is sometimes where the ball comes out different ways, right?” Sirianni said. “If the ball touches the ground and there is a hand-off issue, then it’s on Jalen. If the ball touches the ground on any of those, and he touches it, it’s on Jalen. If the ball comes out, and there is a potential pressure or something like that, and the ball comes out, and he can’t see it, it’s on him.
“I think part of that is, again, this is a team game. Now, he gets provided with a lot of those stats and he has to have that because he is the quarterback.
“In this game(Cowboys on Sunday) that we just had, sure he’s going to want that play back. I think that [Donovan] Wilson made a really good play on that. We have to do a better job protecting the football going to the ground. Jalen has to do a better job with that, going to the ground, and we got to do a better job coaching that.
“There are different ways to simulate going to the ground. It’s one of the most unnatural things that you can do in football, to be able to protect the football as you go to the ground, because naturally your body wants to sprawl out to catch yourself and sprawl out with the arm that’s carrying it.
“So we got to put them in those situations even more. That’s my job as the head coach. Let’s make sure we simulate this drill more of going to the ground. That’s what we have to do to help the players out.
“Again, you try to put them in every situation you can in plays so that they can go out and execute, right? So you run a certain play, you try to give them every look. You try to give them a look of one defense versus one coverage and then another defense versus another coverage, so they’re prepared to make the plays mentally.
“You got to do the same thing when you’re going through fundamentals. You’ve got to put them through all the same things. Again, starts with me putting those guys in positions to execute their job from their practice reps.
“So we’ll get more work. When a play like that happens with Jalen going to the ground or like a play like that happens with I think in the Buffalo game we had a miscommunication, a little bit off with the exchange between the running back and the quarterback, we repped those more.
“Again, it comes into a total team game of the coaches have to do a good job putting them in positions to succeed as far as their fundamentals as well. That’s my job. And then they have to go out and execute as well.”
Moving forward, Hurts has to protect the football better, especially if the Eagles want to make noise in the postseason.
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