Eagles

Feeling Invigorated by the Reports of Jalen Hurts Lining Up Under Center in the New Eagles Offense

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Jul 30th, 2026 · 10:14 AM EDT

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The Eagles beats reported that day 1 of training camp featured a healthy dose of Jalen Hurts under center:

Lot of under center play action looks from the Eagles’ offense early on.

— Brandon Lee Gowton (@BrandonGowton) July 29, 2026

Tim McManus told us that things look VERY different for the Eagles' offense on the first day of camp

"Believe me, it is a brand new offense. We are seeing so much from Jalen Hurts under center. We are seeing so much pre-snap motion. And we are seeing a ton of throws over the… pic.twitter.com/vGEcHK5Wdo

— 97.5 The Fanatic (@975TheFanatic) July 29, 2026

This is good for our mental health, if nothing else, because we’ve been watching a shotgun offense for the entirety of the Nick Sirianni era, and while it was absolutely incredible at times, it was agonizingly sluggish in 2023 and 2025. Hurts did line up under center occasionally, but it wasn’t a large part of the scheme and became a point of consternation over the years, fans and media alike calling for more mixing and matching to make the looks less predictable. Now, with offensive coordinator Sean Mannion coming from the Kyle Shanahan coaching tree, it’s going to look much different this season.

Believe it or not, the Eagles actually used under center in 2025 at their highest rate of the Sirianni era. It was only 23.6%, and still near the bottom of the NFL, but it was higher than:

• 2024: 18.5% under center
• 2023: 7% under center
• 2022: 11.7% under center
• 2021: 16.5% under center

The Birds’ shotgun rate crested 70% every season except for the 2024 Super Bowl year, in which pistol was shown at a 12.7% rate. They have always run 12 personnel (two tight ends) more than 20% of the time in the Sirianni era:

One of the caveats here is the tush push, which makes up a large chunk of under center snaps.

I asked our in-house AI to comb through the Sportradar database and look at under center vs. shotgun and pull some Eagles insights based on this understanding:

“The Eagles have steadily increased their under-center usage over the last two seasons (2024–2025), finding massive success in both the ground and play-action passing games. When running under center (excluding QB sneaks and kneel-downs), Philadelphia’s efficiency jumped from a meager 2.64 yards per carry in 2023 to 5.13 in 2024 and 4.56 in 2025 (outperforming their 4.24 shotgun rushing average in 2025). Furthermore, their under-center passing game has been highly explosive, averaging 9.08 yards per play in 2024 and a whopping 11.51 yards per play in 2025, compared to 8.45 yards per play in the shotgun.”

The AI reported that the Eagles last year ran for 4.24 yards per play in the shotgun, but that number increased to 4.56 while running from under center. The shotgun run % was 48.9, while the under center % was 36.1. So they ran for more yards out of the set that they used less frequently.

In 2024, the amazing Saquon Barkley year, the shotgun run yards per play was 5.37 while under center was 5.13. The Birds ran from the shotgun 59.5% of the time and from under center just 17.1% of the time.

The takeaway, I think, is that they’ve had success with both of these sets over the last two years and mixing and matching and bringing the percentages closer together can only be a good thing. Keep opposing defenses off-balance. Make things less predictable. If the fans knew what was coming, imagine being the 49ers in film study. This all just feels like a breath of fresh air.