Has Jalen Hurts mastered Kellen Moore's offense in a summer?

It finally happened on Wednesday.

In the 16th and final Eagles training camp practice of the summer, Jalen Hurts threw an interception. Darius Slay baited him into a throw and picked it clean.

Oh well. There goes the streak.

While it might seem like the single interception is a blemish on Hurts’ otherwise pristine training camp, it really isn’t. If anything it shines a light on just how efficient and in control Hurts was all summer.

“Jalen has just had an excellent camp,” offensive coordinator Kellen Moore said this week. “He's got great command of this offense, great utilization of tools when he wants to and communication with the offensive line, with the receivers. I just think it's been an awesome process. Excellent.”

Moore explained that well — Hurts has been in command of the offense.

For as much as Hurts has publicly yearned for continuity with the offensive coaching staff — something he hasn’t ever really had — it just isn’t realistic for most of the NFL and definitely isn’t realistic in his situation. He has already gone through Doug Pederson, Nick Sirianni, Shane Steichen and Brian Johnson as his NFL play-callers. If things go too well or too poorly with Moore in 2024, he could be one-and-done too.

But Moore is here now and Hurts has made the most of it.

While this offense, at its core, belongs to the offensive coordinator, there are definitely going to be differences with Hurts as the quarterback. A lot of the offseason was about Hurts and Moore figuring out what works best for both of them. We’ll really see the results of that collaboration in a few weeks but returns at training camp have been very promising.

And maybe a little surprising too.

Because back in the spring — at least on days reporters were at practice — the offense looked disjointed in OTAs. Hurts looked like a quarterback who was still thinking too much, timing was off, and it was fair to wonder if that lack of crispness was going to carry over into the summer. It didn’t.

While the offense wasn’t perfect over the last month, Hurts had a really strong camp within the structure of the offense.

A lot of work went into that.

“Just constant communication, constant dialogue,” Hurts said on Wednesday. “I think that’s where it is. I can really appreciate all those things. They are definitely challenges when you have that constant change and you don’t really have that continuity there. But it’s also a ton of opportunity. Really forging a good relationship with Coach Doug (Nussmieier) and Coach Kellen and really communicating at a high level and them understanding how I see the game and me voicing that to him. And also hearing what he has to say as well and seeing his vision. 

“I think everybody has a vision, everybody has a vision for what they want to be. Everybody has a vision for how something should operate. But to execute that vision, to fulfill it, you have to have a good foundation. You have to have a strong foundation and a strong process in that. So we’ve just been very oriented around the process, not necessarily the results. And really just learning from everything every day. I have definitely tried to have that mentality and be that.”

Aside from the stats of training camp, Hurts definitely passed the eye test.

An outside observer might actually be concerned that Hurts didn’t throw an interception through 15 practices. After all, that sounds like a quarterback who isn’t taking chances, who isn’t pushing the ball down the field. But that wasn’t the case. Sure, it wasn’t always bombs away. Sometimes, Hurts was happy to take a checkdown. But Sirianni viewed that as a good thing.

Sirianni pointed out that Hurts wasn’t risk-averse this summer. There were plenty of times where No. 1 let it fly.

But there were also plenty of times when Hurts took the checkdown because it was the right play within the offense.

“That gets me more excited than sometimes the big wild plays,” Sirianni said. “That's just the development of a quarterback and making plays, and so that's what he's done.”

It’s not just the development of a quarterback but it’s the development of a quarterback in a system. And, as Moore said, Hurts truly looked like he was in command this training camp. That seemed apparent for those who watched practice. 

But what indicators does Moore look for to tell when a quarterback is in command?

“I think just the speed of the operation,” Moore said. “In and out of the huddle, at the line of scrimmage, is the pace of play going at the rate that you want it to and then obviously the decision making and how quickly he can process the game, eliminate some of his progressions, get the ball to the ideal look. Run game, they show up a lot of times because sometimes the QB has to have some tools in the run game to get us in and out of particular plays based off the looks. 

“So when you tie all that together, it's an operation. Everyone sees the throwing ability and that's certainly first and foremost — you have to be able to throw the football — but the ability to command the offense and operate it in the run game, pass game, and protection game takes growing and developing and these guys have done a really good job with it.”

It wasn’t like Hurts was bad in 2023. He was named to his second straight Pro Bowl and still threw for over 3,800 yards and accounted for 38 total touchdowns. But he very clearly didn’t play up to the level we saw in 2022, when he was the MVP runner-up and led the Eagles to the Super Bowl.

And even though some advanced numbers suggest that it was a bit of an anomaly, Hurts threw too many interceptions last season — 15 in 17 games.

That wasn’t a problem this summer. It took him until the last day of training camp to throw his first.

“About time,” Hurts told Slay.

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