Crossing Broad
Nick Sirianni was asked a couple of questions about Jalen Hurts’ not running the ball as frequently this season:
“We’re always thinking about how to protect Jalen and make sure that he is healthy for the long haul. Different plans have different reasons of why you run different things. We’ll do everything we need to do to help this offense get rolling. Jalen’s talented in running the football. He is talented in also holding the backside when he doesn’t run the football, so a lot of different ways to do that. Always looking at everything and how we can improve.
…
There are quarterback runs you can run that are a little (more safe) than another quarterback run. But it’s still football and you still (have) a risk at with every snap that you take, and that’s on a drop back, too. But again, you look at the defenses, how you want to attack, you look at, like I said, what you do well, how to protect the guys, and you’re just looking for the best way to go about that. I don’t think anybody wants to come out of a game with Jalen having 15 carries, designed carries. But again, we’re looking at everything, and we’ll see how that looks going forward.”
Not much there, but we hit this topic on Monday and noted that Hurts is on pace for career lows in yards and rush attempts. You don’t want Hurts getting killed out there, but the Eagles are 13-0 in regular season games when he runs the ball 14 times or more, and they are 3-1 in the postseason when he runs the ball at least 10 times. He’s averaging 5 carries per game in the four losses this year and the offense is just less effective when it doesn’t feature his effective ground game.
Someone mentioned on social that Donovan McNabb had a somewhat similar career arc in terms of rushing attempts. It’s somewhat of a whispered, burgeoning narrative, and while it’s incomplete, you can see why it’s sprouting up.
If you go through the career logs for both guys, Donovan’s fifth full season as a starter was in 2004 when he was 28 years old. Jalen’s fifth full starting season is this year, at age 27, so they’re only a year apart in that regard.
Donovan’s rushing attempts did begin to dip at the same time, with the caveat that 2004 was the Terrell Owens year and he had a bona fide WR1 for the first time ever:
