Taking The Temperature On Eagles QB's Latest Unique Season

You’ve likely heard all the arguments ad nauseam by now. Hurts is 58-25 (including the playoffs) as a starter in a league often defined by its parity, and he’s outplayed one of the greatest of all-time, the Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes, twice on the biggest stage.

Conversely, Hurts had never been a high-volume passer, and his critics often point to perhaps the game’s best supporting cast as some kind of knock against the Super Bowl LIX MVP.

At 6-2 and on their bye week, the Eagles are again one of a handful of legitimate Super Bowl contenders with Hurts running things on the field, and the QB1 is on a heater over the last two games at Minnesota and against the New York Giants. 

Hurts threw for 505 yards with seven touchdowns and no interceptions over the last two wins, completing 79.1% of his passes. He recorded the only “perfect” passer rating (158.3) in the NFL this season against the Vikings, and followed that up with a 141.5 against the Giants.

Hurts’ devotion to ball security has been historic with a 15/1 TD/INT Ratio, and 20/2 TD/Turnover Ratio overall. His TD total is second in the NFL, and his overall passer rating of 114.4 is third. 

Complicating matters is that Hurts has also had some of the ugliest stretches in the league, including a second half in Tampa where he didn’t complete a pass.

The strange spikes in Hurts’ game reach the extremes, fueling the often inane discussions around the quarterback’s performance.

If you pick up your favorite betting app, Hurts is not in the conversation for MVP yet, ranking around 10 or slightly above in most sportsbooks.

A second half to the season like the first for Hurts will likely get him into the top five for an award that should be renamed Most Valuable Quarterback, as some of the other signal callers around the league drop off.

However, until Hurts amps up his conventional statistical performance, he’s not going to be seriously involved in MVP talk.

At his height, when Hurts was runner-up to Mahomes for MVP in 2022, the Eagles’ QB threw for 3701 yards and added 760 more on the ground with 35 total TDs in 15 games.

This season, using that same 15-game sample size, Hurts is on pace for 3,144 passing yards and 388 more on the ground, with 37 total TDs.

Those numbers aren’t enough to crack through the glass ceiling on an award based on sizzle more than steak.  

So, Hurts isn’t a legit MVP candidate right now, but he should be the betting favorite among the same top 10 QBs if the wager is on team success.