Best of unCovering the Birds: It’s all on Tanner McKee now
The Eagles' approach to the backup quarterback position this past offseason was a curious one that has potential to be a dubious one for Howie Roseman.
The news keeps getting worse. Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts will likely miss the rest of the 2026 season with a deep vein thrombosis blood clot, as well as bilateral pulmonary emboli. Moments after the story broke, The Inquirer’s Jeff McLane and Marcus Hayes reacted to the news, looking at what the diagnosis means for the Super Bowl MVP, how the Eagles handled the situation dating back to their trip to London, and whether backup Tanner McKee is ready to take the helm on a full-time basis.
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Jeff McLane: [The Eagles] didn’t say [Hurts’] season is over, but if you’re on blood thinners and from what I understand, and I’m starting to read here and have heard in talking to a couple of people very briefly, he’s going to be on blood thinners for a while. And you certainly can’t play on them. And who knows where the Eagles are going to be at that point, and it doesn’t even make sense [to play Hurts]. The No. 1 concern for everybody is Jalen, and his full recovery. So you know, the hits just keep coming for this team.
Marcus Hayes: At this point, you’ve got two quarterbacks who’ve really never played in the NFL on your roster as the No. 1 and No. 2 quarterbacks. You’ve got [McKee] with one start [this season], you’ve got a rookie [Cole Payton]. So if we are to pivot, how does it affect the team going forward? I mean, we can dissect and grade Tanner McKee all we like. But the reality is it’s all on him now. And that will be the narrative going forward.
» READ MORE: Hayes: Did Eagles protect Jalen Hurts enough with his life-threatening blood clot? Experts say yes — generally.
Jalen Hurts, this [storyline] will last a week, out of sight, out of mind. And the guy in the saddle is Tanner McKee going forward. And one of the big issues from the offseason was, if they aren’t all in on Tanner McKee, what are they going to do about a backup? And they really didn’t address it. They traded a seventh-round pick for Andy Dalton, whom they cut after he threw an interception in his only pass of the year and had a horrible training camp. I mean, he’s done. He’s cooked.
But if that was your plan, pardon the term, but this is organizational malpractice.
If [McKee was] your No. 1 option behind a quarterback in Jalen Hurts who’s been hurt literally every year, a little bit or a lot, this is one of the biggest derelictions of duty in the history of Howie Roseman.
McLane: Yeah, I agree with you, Marcus. We were very much focused on the backup quarterback situation because it was very abnormal. It was very weird to keep four [quarterbacks], it was very weird the way they handled it during the preseason and in training camp and quite frankly I don’t think I ever understood why they brought Andy in. Now my assumption is that Howie Roseman thought that he could swindle another team and get something in return for for one of his backup quarterbacks.
» READ MORE: A rough timeline of the Jalen Hurts blood clot event: Everything we know
I know for a fact they tried to trade Tanner McKee. No one wanted to take him. They knew that the film already on the preseason was out there and he’d looked terrible, quite frankly, as did Andy Dalton. But what you did was — in decreasing the reps for both of them, the backup reps, and they’ve told us many times over how many how important those practice reps are — all of a sudden you’re taking them away from both guys in a new scheme. And now all of a sudden you’ve seen the first quarterback that you had as the backup go in and throw a terrible interception that played a huge role in a loss against the Bears.
Tanner McKee is not clearly... I think he looked better [Sunday] than he did in the preseason. And he’s had time to get better in the offense, but he wasn’t ready. And it’s fair to go back to these decisions that were made at the backup quarterback position and see how they’ve hurt this team. And that goes, number one, to Howie Roseman. because he makes the roster decisions. Nick Sirianni does not. You’re putting Nick in a horrible situation.
There were people inside the building that felt long before Andy Dalton was was cut that he shouldn’t have been on the team. The same’s been said to me about Hollywood Brown. These were bad moves that Howie Roseman made in the offseason, and they’re not major ones. Some of the major ones haven’t panned out, but these minor ones are egregious and they speak very much to everything that has happened to this team. Everyone wants to go after Nick Sirianni and call for his head. He’s not responsible for the roster at all.
» READ MORE: Don’t let Howie Roseman escape his share of the blame for this long, hard Eagles season
Hayes: I will say that you can cast the backup quarterback role as a minor issue, [but] Jeffrey Lurie has told us several times he thinks the second-most important roster spot is the backup quarterback. And this is the second year in a row they really haven’t had a backup quarterback. It didn’t bite them last year, but it could bite them this year.
If you look at this as a glass half full, there’s a reason they’ve retained Tanner McKee. They like him. They think he’s a good player. Like there are 400 other quarterbacks they could have on their roster other than Tanner McKee if they thought Tanner McKee was a bad football player. So maybe there’s more to Tanner McKee than we know, than we’ve seen, that they think is there. But you don’t indicate that when you trade for Andy Dalton and make him your No. 1 backup.
In a year where both the quarterback and the head coach are kind of on the hot seat a little bit, it just doesn’t make any sense.
The news keeps getting worse. Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts will likely miss the rest of the 2026 season with a deep vein thrombosis blood clot, as well as bilateral pulmonary emboli. Moments after the story broke, The Inquirer’s Jeff McLane and Marcus Hayes reacted to the news, looking at what the diagnosis means for the Super Bowl MVP, how the Eagles handled the situation dating back to their trip to London, and whether backup Tanner McKee is ready to take the helm on a full-time basis. Listen here.
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