Jalen Hurts still carries the respect that comes with toughness, production, and a Super Bowl LIX MVP trophy. But if you’re asking how the league sees him right now, the answer is a lot colder than Eagles fans might want.
In Jeremy Fowler’s annual poll of NFL executives, scouts and coaches, Hurts landed at No. 17 and was placed in Tier 6 of the current quarterback landscape. That puts him in a very different conversation than the one built around the league’s elite passers, and Fowler said the reason comes down to one blunt NFL currency: fear.
“There is a great deal of respect in the league for Jalen Hurts, for his intangibles, for his toughness,” Fowler said on 97.5 The Fanatic. “He throws a great deep ball, and he does a lot of things well.”
Still, Fowler said opposing defenses don’t prepare for Hurts the way they do for the top quarterbacks in the game.
“fear in the NFL is currency,” Fowler said, and when teams line up against Philadelphia, the focus starts with the ground game and Saquon Barkley.
“When you gameplan against the Eagles’ offense, it’s Saquon Barkley and the running game,” Fowler continued. “That is not to diminish Hurts. But he doesn’t have the same fear factor as the top guys.”
The ranking reflects how the league is judging Hurts in July of 2026, not the full arc of his career. Fowler said he was only mildly surprised by how low Hurts came in some evaluations, but two straight seasons of shaky passing production have clearly weighed on the conversation.
“In the simplest form, the Eagles were in the bottom third in passing offense the last two years. It is hard to have a top 12, even a top 15 QB, with that metric,” said Fowler.
That reality has shown up in how Philadelphia has handled the offseason, too. The Eagles changed offensive direction with new coordinator Sean Mannion in an effort to make Hurts and the offense more efficient, and they also chose to wait rather than move aggressively on another extension for the soon-to-be sixth-year starter.
Hurts has plenty of believers, and there’s no shortage of people who’ll push back on a No. 17 ranking. But based on the last two seasons, that’s the view from around the NFL - and it’s not hard to see why the league’s power brokers landed there.
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