Crossing Broad
One of the New York bums in our Slack channel shared this. He was trolling, but maybe there’s something wrong with me because I don’t hate the idea of the Eagles drafting Jalen Milroe:
Confession: I was one of those people who hated the Jalen Hurts pick back in 2020. Despised it. Not because I was anti-Hurts. I don’t think anybody was anti-Hurts, they were just anti-picking him in the second round that April because of the circumstances surrounding the Eagles roster at the time. Carson Wentz had seemingly, finally emerged from Nick Foles’ shadow, the Birds needed help on both sides of the ball, and the thought was that they’d take somebody like Jeremy Chinn or Logan Wilson at 53 overall after adding Jalen Reagor in the first round.
Instead, drafting Hurts just put the cloud back over Wentz’s head and the 2020 season turned out to be a dud. They won four games, fired Doug Pederson, and eventually traded Wentz, eating at the time the NFL’s largest dead cap hit. They were accused of tanking the season finale by Joe Judge, Sal Paolantonio, and other Kenesaw Mountain Landis pant-wearers, and all we got to see from Hurts that year was insulting, force-fed QB running situations that resembled Taysom Hill with training wheels.
Hurts, of course, went on to lead the Eagles to two Super Bowls, so it worked out in the end, but not before Howie Roseman dug himself out of his own hole, and brilliantly. It wasn’t a linear path from point A to point B, but the Birds got there thanks to a lot of emotional intelligence and clever maneuvering.
So when you’re thinking about Milroe in 2025, is the situation similar or different to 2020? It depends on what you think about Tanner McKee. If he can be QB2 moving forward, then you don’t use pick 64 or 96 on a developmental quarterback, which is what Milroe is. He’s an explosive athlete who can run and make plays on the move, but inside the pocket he has a ways to go. Does that sound like someone you know? He’s so similar to what Hurts was coming out of Oklahoma, and he definitely needs some work reading the field and working on his timing and anticipation, but he ran for 20 touchdowns last season and has all of the physical tools to become a legitimate NFL quarterback. He’d learn from the best and find himself in a good situation in Philly. This is the type of guy you want sitting for a year instead of thrown into some “expectations now” situation should a team inexplicably reach for him in the early going on Thursday night.
Or, if the Eagles really like Milroe, he sits for a year or two and they flip McKee instead, or even Hurts at some point. The guy from “Broad Street Misery” is a Hurts hater, but what do the Birds think? Maybe they believe they only have 2-3 more good...
