Even after trading Carson Wentz, Jalen Hurts still isn’t being treated like a franchise quarterback, despite the only other quarterback option on the Philadelphia Eagles’ roster being 36-year-old statuesque can-only-operate-from-the-pocket Joe Flacco. Apparently, new head coach Nick Sirianni isn’t naming his starting quarterback yet, which is insulting.
Sure, you can go on with, “But Jon, it’s just coach speak. He wants competition everywhere” all you want. When it comes to your quarterback position, however, you name your starter unless you absolutely do not have one.
Also, it doesn’t help that Sirianni has appeared to be grasping at straws since his introductory press conference, while demonstrating to the public exactly zero sense of identity or direction with the team he now commands. From his press conference:
“Next thing that’s very important to me is that we build a smart football team — that we have a smart football team here. And I know we have the people in place to do that. The first part of that, the first part of being smart, is knowing what to do. We’re gonna — we’re gonna know — we’re gonna have systems in place that are easier to learn. Complicated to the defense or offense that they’re going against, or the special teams group they’re going against, but easy for us to learn. Because when we can put that — when we can learn our system, and we can get good at our system, then our talent can take over. Less thinking equals talent take over, but we need to have systems in place and we will have systems in place to do so.”
Yikes. I don’t care how effective (or ineffective) Sirianni is at public speaking, but I do care about the level of confidence in his abilities he can demonstrate, both to the players he is attempting to lead and to a fanbase that is desperate for answers.
After Wentz was traded, I thought we finally had a clear direction for this franchise and for Hurts, who absolutely deserves a chance to be a starting quarterback in the NFL. Then, there were a bunch of rumors about the Eagles using their No. 6 overall pick on a quarterback, which made no sense. Now, even after trading Wentz, and even after trading the No. 6 pick, Sirianni in his infinite wisdom is still operating with and conveying no certainty in what the organization is doing, and it’s been like two months since Wentz was shipped out.
The draft is next week, and Sirianni seems more preoccupied with playing rock player scissors than he does with naming his quarterback.
I swear, if Sirianni passes on an elite talent with the No.12 overall pick because he doesn’t like the way he played rock-paper-scissors, I will have material to write for a solid week. Maybe he doesn’t like the way Hurts played rock-paper-scissors. If only Hurts had gone with “rock” and talked a little more trash, then maybe he would have earned the respect of his head coach and would be the starting quarterback already.
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