Monday, Marcus Hayes at the Inquirer wrote a story calling for the benching of Jalen Hurts. 

Torrey Smith, who won the Super Bowl with the Eagles a few years ago, went on Twitter to call the column “trash” –

Smith is referencing Joe Flacco, his former Baltimore teammate. They played together from 2011 to 2014 and won a ring.

I’m guessing most people didn’t even read the column, so I’ll drop a couple of snippets here:

“At 2-4, the Eagles’ season can be salvaged. Every remaining game is winnable, if they do this one, simple thing.”

I would disagree with this. They’re not gonna beat Denver or Vegas on the road. They’ll probably lose to the Chargers and Cowboys at home. The winnable games are Detroit, New Orleans, WFT 2x, NYG 2x, and the Jets. The very best they could do at this point is probably 8-9, and that’s not good enough for a playoff spot.

Marcus:

“Hurts has had his chance. He’s been the starter for more than one-third of this season, and he was the starter for one-fourth of last season, and he’s proved one thing: He’s not ready to be a starter. In fact, at this moment Hurts might be the worst passer of any regular starter in modern Eagles history.

This is not an indictment of what Hurts can be. It’s an honest assessment of what he is.

It’s also an honest assessment of what the Eagles are: a team of fading stars, but stars with enough brilliance left to win. If that means starting Joe Flacco, then swallow hard and do it.”

Hard disagree. If Joe Flacco receives even one snap this season, then the campaign is a complete and utter failure. This entire season is a fact-finding mission. We’re trying to figure out what we have in Jalen Hurts and Nick Sirianni. And if the Eagles do decide to sit Hurts, it will be for Gardner Minshew, not a 36-year-old with no future on this team.

Also, the Birds are not a team of “fading stars.” That was 2020 and 2019. They have young talent across the board in this transitional year. DeVonta Smith. Quez Watkins. Jordan Mailata. Landon Dickerson. Kenneth Gainwell. Jalen Reagor. Davion Taylor, etc. It’s much more about that group than the likes of Jason Kelce and Darius Slay.

The rest of the column goes over some points about Hurts missing targets, and defenses game planning for him, and there are plenty of valid takes from Marcus in there. I just think the suggestion of benching Hurts six games in misses the point entirely. The Eagles were only predicted to do two things this year – jack and shit. The main priority was finding out if the quarterback and head coach are legit, and we don’t have a large enough sample size for that right now.