Stanley Holditch
There is no question Jalen Hurts is good at pretend football, or what we call fantasy football. He’s third overall in standard PPR scoring this year behind only Brady and Lamar Jackson, and ahead of Stafford due to his high rushing floor.
But Hurts lacks the job security the other four listed enjoy. Even Brady, who will be entering the 2022 season at age 45, has much more job security than Hurts, aged 23.
The Eagles not only stand at 3-6 this season, decidedly out of the playoff hunt in the stacked NFC, they have three first round picks, all currently projected in the top 15. So while the Eagles have plenty of needs, it’s going to be tempting to spend at least one of those picks on a QB unless Hurts decisively makes his case for being the franchise QB going forward.
If Only There Were a Way of Looking Into the Future
There is no time machine or crystal ball, but there is at least one player we can look at who bears striking similarities to Hurts. Running QB, Heisman finalist, inaccurate passer who many questioned could ever transition to a true starting quarterback. You might have heard of him, Lamar Jackson.
The comparisons don’t stop there. They both sat for most of their rookie year behind an established QB. And once you look into the relevant statistics of their first 13 games, the comparisons only get more compelling.
QBR
QBR is an excellent predictive metric for game by game performance. Other than his spike game in his 8th week, Lamar’s QBR line looks very similar to Hurts, with the variance starting in game 11 with Hurts trending north and Lamar trending south.
Of course this doesn’t really measure stats that impact fantasy performance, but we’re not really concerned with fantasy performance here. We know that Hurts is killing it in terms of fantasy, the question is whether Hurts is showing the metrics that will make the GM and Head Coach comfortable with him at quarterback.
Completion Percentage
One of the biggest knocks against Hurts has been his accuracy, and while completion percentage is not the perfect metric as it doesn’t account for drops and intentional throws out of bounds, across a large enough sample size it’s good enough for a general measure of accuracy.
You can see from this chart there is little variance between the two QBs for their first 13 games. Lamar was labeled as inaccurate when he started out as well, and while he isn’t the most accurate QB in the league now, few would argue that he is one of the league’s most valuable QBs and one any team would like to have as a starter.
Passing Yards
Both quarterbacks are great with their legs and can produce on the ground. That’s never been in question, but both have also had to fight off the impression that they are really just glorified running backs, whether that’s fair or not.
If anything, Hurts has shown more as a passer than Jackson in terms of this metric across their first 13 games. Hurts has 4 games north of 300 passing yards while Jackson has only 1 which came in his 8th game. For the past 4 games Hurts has had low attempts while the team is focused on winning games on the ground. Also something Lamar dealt with in the beginning of his career.
Interceptions
The most visible way a quarterback can hurt his team’s chances to win is by turning the ball over. This is the one area that Hurts has underperformed Jackson, as Jackson had a long stretch between game 3 through 10 where he did not throw a single pick.
Hurts has not had a 3-interception game like Lamar, and is trending in the right direction now with no picks game 11 through 13, but that also comes with decreased attempts.
Conclusion
First, Hurts is not Lamar Jackson. Lamar merely profiles as the most recent and viable comparison when looking at Hurts’s early season trajectory.
The biggest difference comes in the stat that coaches and GMs care the most about, Ws and Ls. Currently the Eagles sit at 3-6, and in 2019, Lamar’s first season as a starter, the Ravens went 14-3 and won their division with a 6-3 division record. There is no chance that Hurts has a season as good as that.
But any good coach and GM knows that no single player, not even the quarterback, should have the full weight of the record on their back. How much Roseman and to a lesser degree Siriani, assuming he comes back for another season, weight the above metrics remains to be seen, but dynasty managers should take heart that Hurts’s progression is not nearly as dire or awful as the headline-hungry media have made it seem.
I would say that Hurts is a hold unless his value increases to the point where he can be traded for a starter with stellar job security and an established track record as a top-10 fantasy producer. All Hurts needs to be a top-five fantasy QB is a little faith from the front office.
