Football fans are teeing off on a prominent NFL insider after he started a Jalen Hurts trade rumor out of nowhere.
Two months after nearly leading the Philadelphia Eagles to a Super Bowl 57 championship, the 2022 MVP runner-up was rewarded with a lucrative five-year contract extension worth $255 million.
Hurts and the Eagles got off to a blistering 10-1 start, only to drop five of their final six regular season games before falling to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 32-9 in the Wild Card Round. Head coach Nick Sirianni has since fired defensive coordinator Sean Desai and OC Brian Johnson.
On Tuesday, Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio started a frenzy on social media when he brought up a hypothetical Hurts trade scenario:
“Will quarterback Jalen Hurts return?
While there’s no specific reason to believe the Eagles or Hurts are ready for a fresh start, the general sense of dysfunction within the locker room seemed palpable toward the end of the season. It feels like something big happened, something we don’t know about. Something we might never know about. Whatever it was/is could be enough, in theory, to make the team or the player interested in making a change.
Unlike many high-end quarterback contracts, Hurts’ deal makes it fairly simple — if the Eagles want to do it (and if Hurts will waive his no-trade clause for it).
He has been paid $24.3 million so far. The cap hit for a pre-June 1 trade would be only $18.632 million for 2024. He’d then be off the books for 2025.”
Needless to say, it didn’t take long for fans to scoff at Florio’s bold take:
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If there’s one area the Eagles will need to overhaul, it’s certainly not the QB position. Even in a “down year” for Hurts, he still completed 65.8 percent of pass attempts for 3,858 yards and 23 touchdowns to go along with 605 rushing yards and a career-high 15 rushing scores.
It’s far more likely that GM Howie Roseman will address the RB position (D’Andre Swift is a free agent), the offensive line (Jason Kelce is likely retiring) and a woeful defense that allowed the third-most points (25.2 per game).
