Why doesn’t Jalen Hurts run anymore?
Watching Josh Allen tear apart the Rams with his legs Monday night you couldn’t help wonder why that dimension has virtually disappeared from Jalen Hurts’ game.
Allen ran for 121 yards in the Bills’ wild 37-34 win over the Rams Monday night in Inglewood, Calif., with 91 of those yards on just six carries coming in the fourth quarter and overtime.
He took over the game with his legs in much the same way Hurts used to.
Hurts one day earlier had two rushing yards on two carries in the Eagles’ 19-17 loss to the Jaguars in London.
Once upon a time, Hurts was Allen’s equal as a runner.
In fact, he rushed for more yards than Allen in the same number of games in their first five seasons. In NFL history, only Lamar Jackson and Cam Newton had more rushing yards than Hurts in their first five seasons, and Hurts wasn’t even a starter most of his rookie season.
But Hurts has changed the way he plays, and after averaging 42 yards per game (subtracting kneeldowns) from 2020 through 2024, he’s averaged only 25 yards per game since opening day last year.
After twice averaging over 50 rushing yards per game early in his career, he’s at a career-low 21.4 yards per game this year, which ranks 9th among quarterbacks. After running for 49 yards in the opener vs. Washington, he’s averaged just 15 yards per game since Week 2. His 61 rushing yards the last four weeks is 2rd-fewest in a four game stretch since he became a full-time starter in 2021. It’s his fewest – by 75 yards – through five games of a season.
His two rushing yards Sunday were 2nd-fewest of his 89 career starts. He had minus-10 rushing yards in the win over the Vikings last year at U.S. Bank Stadium. He had two five-yard losses, one of them a kneeldown, in the final 47 seconds of that game.
Hurts is still effective when he does run. His 4.7 average is his highest since 2021, and his two runs of 20 yards or more match his total from all of last year.
He just does it less than ever.
Why?
I asked him that on Wednesday.
“I think there’s a new offense, one,” he said. “Obviously, we have different eyes for the game. We’ve got different units and different pieces and ultimately different coaches. So I think that is a natural difference in perspective and what we see, how we want to approach things.”
I followed that up asking if he anticipates running more in the future.
“I’ve used the words gelling and everybody kind of building together, being able to find that, and when we go out there, over time, I think it’s important overall to just have an identity and be able to make it less about the opponent and more about who you are.
“And so I think as we grow and as we experience things – always great to experience these things with a win, and we haven’t been able to do that – so my mentality is always to try and figure out the best way to win, and that’s a collective thing.”
In his career, the Eagles are 59-25 when Hurts runs at least five times and 9-15 when he doesn’t. That’s a .702 winning percentage when he runs five times and .375 when he doesn’t.
“I think we’re always looking for ways to integrate him into the run game,” Sean Mannion said Tuesday. “Some of it’s dependent on the opponent and the fronts they’re giving us, the looks you’re getting. But it’s a unique trait that he has that makes him dangerous.”
But it’s not dangerous if he’s not doing it.
The last few weeks the offense has been putrid and it’s felt like Hurts could have really made a difference with either some scrambles or called runs. But he has just 11 runs for 45 yards in the Eagles’ three straight losses and just 16 carries over the last four games. That’s the fewest carries he’s had in a three- or four-game span since he became the full-time starter in 2021.
Hurts did appear on the injury report late last week with a calf injury, but Mannion said he didn’t think that was a factor in him running just twice Sunday in London.
Hurts has the ability to make big plays with his legs, and big plays have been sorely missing from the offense lately.
This is a guy who from 2021 through 2024 had 91 runs of at least 10 yards, and only 10 running backs had more during that four-year span. The last two years he has only 16, and 37 running backs have more.
Maybe it’s a coincidence that the four-game stretch where Hurts has run less than any point in his career coincides with a four-game stretch where the offense has been the worst in the NFL.
But it’s unlikely.
This offense just functions better when Hurts is making plays with his legs, and it’s been stagnant the last few weeks without that element.
“We go into every game doing the best things that we think we can to attack a defense,” Nick Sirianni said Wednesday. “And sometimes that calls for some things in the quarterback run game. Sometimes it doesn’t.
“We’re trying to do everything we need to to attack a defense. And Jalen has a unique skill set and many different things, you know, and like a great passer, you know, can move the ball down the field that way, can run in the quarterback run game, can also run on scrambles. So all those things are alive when you have a player like Jalen.”
Just not lately.