ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler on Jalen Hurts’ Surprising Place in His NFL QB Rankings

The most surprising name on Jeremy Fowler's quarterback rankings is the one that got left out of the top 10 entirely. Jalen Hurts, a Super Bowl MVP, landed at 17, and on The Rich Eisen Show, Fowler tried to explain a result even he seemed to find a little uncomfortable.

"That's a complicated one, Rich," Fowler admitted. He was quick to say Hurts probably deserves to be higher, and he stacked up the credentials the league genuinely respects. Hurts throws "a beautiful deep ball," he is accomplished, and above all he shows up when it counts. "What is your quarterback going to do in the moments where you need to win in January?" Fowler said. "He's proven that on a Super Bowl stage." Toughness and intangibles round out the profile.

The reservations, though, are specific and they are about how Hurts plays the position between the big moments. Fowler laid out the case the coaches made to him: to play quarterback at the highest level, you have to throw efficiently over the middle of the field and make decisions quickly as a passer, knowing when to get rid of the ball. Hurts, in their view, has struggled with that. And the numbers around him do not help. Philadelphia's passing offense has ranked in the bottom third of the league each of the last two years.

Fowler offered a revealing comparison. The only other team with a top-tier quarterback in that same statistical range is Baltimore, which sat in the 20s. But there is a caveat that saves Lamar Jackson and does not extend to Hurts. "You watch Lamar Jackson with two eyes, and you know the otherworldly things he can do," Fowler said. "Jalen's not that kind of athlete."

That leads to the other question hanging over Hurts, whether his running has diminished. Fowler said people around the league wonder if he was less explosive as a runner last year, or less willing, or simply not called on to run as much. Whatever the cause, the dual-threat element that once defined him "wasn't shown as much last year," and Fowler thinks Hurts needs more of it to climb.

The voting told the story. Fowler said Hurts "was not a factor at all in the voting of this exercise," appearing on only about 15% of ballots with no vote higher than nine or 10. "There's not a ton of buzz around Jalen Hurts leaguewide right now," he said, while conceding that 17 is "two high" and that somewhere in the 10 to 15 range would feel more right to him.

Rich did not hold back on the ranking. "That's disrespectful. I'll just be straight up," he said. But he also floated a theory that went beyond the film. Rich pointed to "the stuff that we don't know about in that locker room that the rest of the league might know about," the kind of thing that never gets reported because it stays in house. In his read, that unspoken chatter, more than any completion percentage over the middle, is what really shows up in a leaguewide vote. "That's all of it right there," he said.