Who cares if Eagles are winning ugly? Why Jalen Hurts and Co. deserve more credit for title-worthy strengths

The Philadelphia Eagles didn’t win pretty in Sunday’s snow brawl with the Los Angeles Rams, surviving a last-second Matthew Stafford comeback attempt to reach their second NFC Championship game in three seasons. As a result, Eagles faithful had just enough reason to demand more from their squad. And outsiders had just enough reason to critique Philadelphia’s ongoing failure to produce the kind of showstopping offensive fireworks, at least through the air, that have often defined the modern NFL.

Perhaps what both parties need to accept, and/or respect, is what Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts said back in December: “It’s about the team. I don’t care how it looks.”

The critics, who look at Hurts’ tame passing marks not only against the Rams but in plenty of Eagles games this season, aren’t wrong to believe that boasting an explosive downfield offense is generally the best path to postseason glory. If you can pass it like the best of them, you’ve always got a chance. And when your lineup includes two of the best receivers in the game in A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith, it stands to reason you should be regularly lighting up the scoreboard by airing the ball in their direction.

What these same critics may well be missing is the fact the Eagles are explosive, and are once again on the doorstep of postseason glory … just not in the way most people prefer in the year 2025.

“I think that’s something that people have to accept,” Hurts said in December, when discussing his own fluctuating role at quarterback, “that it’s going to look how Jalen Hurts wants it to look. But he’s gonna win.”

It’d be one thing if Hurts said this while consistently struggling to get the Eagles to the playoffs. His words carry weight because his track record as the shepherd of Philadelphia’s all-star lineup carries even more: Since 2022, he is 41-12 as a starter, including playoffs, with the fourth-best career win percentage among active quarterbacks. Better yet, he excels at the position’s most important job — ball security — when it matters most; in six playoff games since 2022, Hurts has just one turnover, even while handling the rock as both a passer and regular piece of the Eagles’ rushing game.

We can say Hurts isn’t often the pretty pocket passer that is, say, the Detroit Lions’ Jared Goff. We can say he isn’t even the dynamic scrambler that is the Baltimore Ravens’ Lamar Jackson. And yet only one of those three top-tier quarterbacks controlled the football to advance to the conference championship this weekend. Only one of them has now come within one win of the Super Bowl two times in the last three years. He also happens to be the youngest of the three, at 26.

But Hurts is merely a product of the system, the detractors holler in fury! Really? It’s one thing to note that the Eagles’ passing attack has been inconsistent. They should hit more big plays with their talent. But are we dinging the Buffalo Bills’ Josh Allen for struggling to total 150 yards in his win over Jackson and the Ravens in the AFC? Are we forgetting that Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs are eyeing a historic three-peat by winning almost exclusively on the margins as an offensive attack, one year after relying heavily on a physical run game and suffocating defense to hoist the trophy?

If the counterpoint is that sluggish but scrappy games are the exception, not the rule, with elites like Allen and Mahomes, that’s fair, but only to an extent. Mahomes is within reach of a fifth (!) career Super Bowl appearance despite producing solid, not spectacular, passing numbers for two straight seasons. And Hurts himself is literally two years removed from one of the most prolific Super Bowl outings in NFL history, in which he used both arm and legs to take Mahomes’ Chiefs to the wire.

Elite quarterbacks are a key ingredient to championship football, but perhaps we ought to reconsider just what “elite quarterbacking” really means. Dazzling highlight-reel passing is fun and looks more sustainable, but if it’s not accompanied by sturdy blocking, reliable rushing, physical defense, smart coaching — in other words, a championship-level team effort — then it’s often more flashy than formidable. The rare ones can be both. Mahomes, like Tom Brady in his New England Patriots prime, has adapted to lean upon his team’s strengths in critical spots. Hurts has so far done the same in green.

Which brings us back to the point: The Eagles may or may not throw bomb after bomb, feeding their perimeter weapons like Brown and Smith, but they may just as well run rampant, thanks to their burly front and the effortless burst of MVP-level ball carrier Saquon Barkley. They may just as well crash the opposing pocket with the nasty push of emergent interior force Jalen Carter, or the battle-tested range of deep cover men like Darius Slay and C.J. Gardner-Johnson. And then, when you least expect it, Jalen Hurts — the embodiment of the whole unpredictable but inevitable operation — may do it himself.

Winning pretty? It’s a nice fantasy for most teams. Winning in general? The Eagles keep doing that.