Jalen Hurts squinted through the rain and took notice of what he needed to do.
“Green! Green! Green!”
The quarterback concluded his cadence. He waved DeVonta Smith into motion. Hurts absorbed the snap, pumped once to his right, then spun a spiral that struck Smith springing over three defenders.
A score. A spike. A scream. A fourth consecutive comeback by the Philadelphia Eagles had begun. This time against the Buffalo Bills. This time with Hurts hurling three second-half touchdowns and hurtling for a walk-off overtime run.
6 points for Skinny Batman 🦅
📺: #BUFvsPHI on CBS
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus https://t.co/1dOevJjoZZ pic.twitter.com/ASU9FTFBoq— NFL (@NFL) November 27, 2023
After each subsequent score, each one more implausible than the first, Hurts convened with offensive coordinator Brian Johnson, where they engaged in critical conversations within the most crucial coach-player relationship in football. It’s what reinforces the confidence from which the MVP candidate’s transcendence evolves: an offensive brain trust that fuses framework with freedom and is built on a relationship that’s as familiar as family.
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Their story starts in Texas. In 2003, when Johnson was quarterbacking Baytown Lee High in an eastern enclave outside Houston, Hurts was the school’s ball boy. Hurts’ father, Averion, was the defensive coordinator. Averion roamed the sideline trading friendly barbs with head coach Dick Olin, the patriarch of seven-on-seven football in Texas, whose spread offenses yielded seven straight Division I quarterbacks.
Johnson was the fifth, a one-year starter who moved down from nearby Crosby. He was a lightly recruited quarterback who would sign with the University of Utah, back up future No. 1 draft pick Alex Smith during an undefeated 2004 season, then pave his own unbeaten path by stunning Alabama in the 2009 Sugar Bowl. The Crimson Tide asserted recruiting revenge years later. Nick Saban signed Hurts despite Johnson’s heavy pursuit while Mississippi State’s quarterbacks coach. Johnson, who later joined mentor Dan Mullen’s staff at Florida, tried again to land a transferring Hurts, who instead chose Oklahoma and postponed their reunion until the pros.
They’re now in their third season together in Philadelphia, and Johnson’s offseason elevation from quarterbacks coach to offensive coordinator fully formed the duo with Hurts that those close to them say is partly defined by their distinct demeanors. Straight-faced. Stoic. Smiles are the delicacies reserved for major scores. Their stability amid chaos has staged four straight second-half comebacks. Their mid-game solutions originate from a system built on their shared trust.
“Those two together, they figure things out,” Olin said. “It’s just a tremendous dynamic when you can be like that. You don’t see these guys coming out, slamming their helmets down or anything else. They might be disappointed with this, that or the other thing. But they’ll sit and they’ll talk about it together. It’s just Brian and Jalen. That’s how it has to be.”
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What’s going on inside the mind of a quarterback? That’s the fundamental conversation. Strip down the Eagles offense from its myriad routes, runs and RPOs, and at its core is a philosophy that relies on the quarterback’s vision and empowers his instincts and decisions. Said Johnson, in a straightforward sense that makes his scheme sound simple: “If your quarterback is playing well, you’re going to have a chance to win every game that you play.”
Nothing has demonstrated this more than the polarity of Hurts’ past two performances. He was 5-of-7 for 46 yards and an interception while the Eagles fell behind 17-7 at halftime to the Kansas City Chiefs. His second-half resurgence, which included two rushing touchdowns, fueled the 21-17 victory. Hurts was 4-of-11 passing for 33 yards and an interception in the first half against the Bills, which buried the Eagles beneath another 17-7 halftime deficit that Hurts again subdued with four second-half scores.
GO DEEPER
Jalen Hurts has MVP moment in Eagles' most unlikely comeback yet
As foreboding as those first-half droughts are for a 10-1 team in pursuit of its second Super Bowl title, they underline the pivotal problem-solving that makes the Eagles so hard to beat. Coaches and players become all too aware of adages that spell out how their weeks of game planning can sometimes barely survive the first quarter. That Hurts and Johnson must adapt on the fly isn’t all that unique. It’s part of the job description. But they’ve flexed the proficiency of their sideline solutions enough times to reinforce that resilience is the team’s greatest strength.
“Well, it starts, really, with Jalen,” said backup quarterback Marcus Mariota, a former Heisman Trophy winner who’s on his fourth team in nine seasons. “Having the confidence to be like, ‘OK, hey, I see the game this way.’ Or, ‘I’m feeling this, and we can adjust to this on the sideline.’ And then everybody kind of being on the same page. Brian does a great job of facilitating that, allowing Jalen to be creative and own some of that part of the offense.
“Some of the best offenses I’ve been around, it really takes ownership from the QB. Then, what’s cool about what Brian does … he elevates that. ‘Hey, think about this. If you get this look, let’s try to do this.’ Like I said, it’s very collaborative. When Jalen’s owning it, when he can go and take charge of it, I think that’s when we’re operating at our best.”
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How about an example? Turn back to Kansas City. Turn to the fourth-quarter throw in which Hurts hit Smith for a game-changing 41-yard strike. Eagles coach Nick Sirianni later revealed to reporters that Hurts checked to the pass pre-snap. Hurts noticed the Chiefs had previously matched Smith one-on-one with safety Mike Edwards when the Eagles lined up in their four-wideout package, and after alerting Smith, he unfurled the impromptu completion that led to their go-ahead score.
The original play within the four-wideout package provided the framework. Hurts then exercised his unique freedom. Some offensive systems only allow the quarterback to make one check on a given play. In others, the quarterback takes ownership of everything. In Philadelphia, Johnson, Hurts and quarterbacks coach Alex Tanney build out a list of checks. That way, when Hurts gets to the line of scrimmage, he can scan the defense and pick the one he wants.
“I think one of the things, when you build a system, is you want to have answers,” Johnson said. “You want to have answers for specific defenses or specific looks that you can take advantage of, and be able to get to those. With Jalen being the type of player that he is, we can do some unconventional things and some things that are probably not as traditional as people are probably used to seeing because he has such a unique skill set and ability. I’ve always said when you have people that have rare traits and the ability to do stuff like that, it’s not a bad thing to lean into that.”
It’s where the Eagles thrive offensively. It’s where Hurts delivers his biggest moments. Left tackle Jordan Mailata was dumbfounded by Hurts’ walk-off overtime run against the Bills. The quarterback draw is a staple of Johnson’s offense. There, at Buffalo’s 12, Johnson called a designed quarterback run behind Mailata. But the Bills began with five defenders overloading the left side, including safety Micah Hyde.
Still, Hurts stuck with the play. He triggered running back D’Andre Swift’s rightward motion. Hyde followed. A blatant lane emerged.
“It was the perfect play call,” Mailata said at his locker after the game. “Jalen loved it. Even though the safety started in the box, and it was a bad look to run that play, Jalen’s like, ‘He’s going to move.’ That’s what he said after the play. He was like, ‘I knew he was going down.’ I lost him after that, after he was talking about the coverages, but he said he loved it. He kept the play on. Jesus, I can’t believe that happened.”
The play embodied Hurts’ consistent choice: To check? Or not to check? There’s an understood trust required from Johnson that Hurts is fully capable of working through his options, and there’s also required internal confidence from Hurts that he can trust his choice and not abuse his power.
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“It’s very easy as a quarterback to just go out there and start making a whole bunch of checks,” Mariota said. “But you know …”
It could be the wrong one.
“Exactly,” Mariota continued. “And what Jalen does a great job of is he gets to something that he really likes against certain looks. If it doesn’t work out, that’s all right. Those are conversations that we have week in and week out. We’re just building him a plan to go out there and play confidently.”
The Eagles and their first-half slumps remain a troubling conundrum. The offense’s initial choices haven’t recently been the right ones. There are the interceptions. The three-and-outs. The broadcast images of Hurts and Johnson managing madness in the middle of the pouring rain.
“It’s a lot of man-to-man conversations,” Smith said. “Definitely with those two knowing each other for so long and things like that, they can have those uncomfortable conversations with each other. They have them, then (Johnson) comes to us, and we can have the same conversations.”
Johnson, a three-time college coordinator at Utah, Houston and Florida, still wields an unwavering mindset that stems from his time as a quarterback. When broached about being the target of public criticism, Johnson said, “Being criticized does not affect me one way or another.” His second-half adjustments suggest his stoicism doesn’t fester into obstinance.
He understood the quarterback back and forth himself. At Baytown, in perhaps the most old-school fashion possible, he’d jog to the sideline after every down to receive the next play from Olin. They’d talk over their options. Johnson: Let’s run Y Cross. Olin: Sure, but X could be open to the post. Check the post. But, sometimes, Johnson would just look to the sideline and point to his chest.
“That could mean two things,” Olin said. “One: ‘I have a good play.’ Or two: ‘I’m tired. I’m not running over to see you.'”
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Johnson’s quick transition from Utah’s quarterback allowed him to streamline his experience into coaching. His one year pursuing professional football — a rookie minicamp with the Green Bay Packers, a season with the now-defunct United Football League’s New York Sentinels — led him back to Utah as a 22-year-old quarterbacks coach. At 24, he became the youngest college offensive coordinator in the FBS. And at 25, Utah coach Kyle Whittingham named him co-offensive coordinator with Dennis Erickson, a seven-time college head coach and former coach of the Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers.
Erickson, who helped cultivate the advent of spread offenses under Jack Elway at San Jose State, oversaw a Seahawks offense in the late 1990s in which he managed a relationship with Hall of Fame quarterback Warren Moon. By then, Erickson laughed, Moon had “been around the block.” He knew what he could do and what he couldn’t. Their meetings still remained vital, a trust that helped Moon secure his ninth Pro Bowl at age 41.
“Communication,” Erickson said. “That’s what it’s all about. Nobody has all the answers.”
Searching for solutions amid in-game crises seems almost inevitable for the Eagles, who host the 49ers on Sunday in a rematch of last season’s NFC Championship Game. The 49ers, their stingy defense and league-leading 15 interceptions could force enough problems for Hurts and Johnson to once again huddle on the sideline. It’s almost become where they belong.
“You’ve got to be able to talk through things as defenses continue to give you a ton of different looks,” Hurts said. “We face that week in and week out. So, just being able to communicate, adjust as needed and then go out there and execute. I think the foundational piece of everything is just being able to execute on a high level regardless of what’s going on. That’s what it comes down to.”
(Top photo: Chris Szagola / Associated Press)
