Why Jalen Hurts plans to ‘stay the course’ after turnovers stalled the Eagles offense

Very few things about this Eagles season have made much sense, so what happened Monday is in some ways was just par for the course in what has been a wacky post-Super Bowl campaign.

The offense looked the best it has during what is now a five-game slump of sorts. The Eagles racked up 365 yards against the Chargers, finally had a balance of run and pass, yet Jalen Hurts thew four interceptions, more than he ever has in a game, and the Eagles suffered their third consecutive defeat after one final turnover in the red zone in overtime.

Two days later, as calls for his benching outside the NovaCare Complex — both from radio talking heads and some fans — increase, Hurts said he plans to lean on the things that he always does, but taking it all to “another level.”

“I take the approach I’ve taken for a while, and it’s seemed to work,” Hurts said Wednesday. “I think right now it’s just a matter of being more detailed, more focused.

“When you put forth the work, put forth the effort, good things happen when you need them to happen. That’s my mentality. That’s how I’ve gotten to where I am today.”

Regarding any benching, Hurts’ coach put that notion to rest, at least for now, during his weekly interview with 94 WIP, calling the idea “ridiculous” Wednesday morning.

The offense, Nick Sirianni said later in the day, did “a lot of good things,” a sentiment Jordan Mailata later expressed in the locker room after the Eagles began their practice week with a walk-through. It was the turnovers, Mailata said, that made the difference. The turnovers, of course, put Hurts under the microscope. But of his four interceptions, A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith took ownership of one apiece.

“[We’ve] got to make catches and I think it’s a different ballgame,” Mailata said.

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The message this week, Mailata said, was to “pick ourselves up from off the floor and dominate your box.”

For Hurts, there is plenty to work on, even if two of the four interceptions weren’t entirely on him.

The Eagles added some new wrinkles to the offense Monday. They returned to the under-center looks that they found some success with earlier in the season. They had new schemes in the running game, and invited Hurts to be more aggressive throwing the ball over the middle of the field, something he hasn’t done much. The Eagles and Hurts value possessing the ball, and we learned Monday why they don’t take too many chances in the middle of the field and into tight windows. But there were still signs of life from an offense that has too often looked impotent and vanilla.

“I think that he did a good job of taking some of those opportunities that he was given, and I think he’s always done a good job of taking what the defense gives him,” Sirianni said of Hurts using the middle of the field. “Obviously, I never want the turnovers, but he did some really good things. I’m always going to look at the win-loss, the turnovers, and look at that and say that, but there were a lot of good things on offense. We were able to move the football against a really good defense.

“Now, we didn’t finish drives for multiple different reasons, and we turned the ball over for multiple different reasons, but there was a lot to be encouraged by, that we’re continuing to go into the right direction that we need to go.”

» READ MORE: Eagles’ Jalen Hurts hits his low point, which begs the question: Should he be benched for Tanner McKee?

Hurts said there seems to be an “antagonist” every week.

“When we do something very well, then there’s another thing that comes up and kind of bites us,” he said. “This week, it was turnovers. Hurts also had one interception a week earlier vs. Chicago, which doubled his count from one to two this season.

“We just have to find a way to put it all together,” Hurts said.

Last week, leading up to the Chargers game, Hurts revealed that he often returns to old film. It is well documented that Hurts has dealt with a lot of change. He’s had 10 coordinators in the last 10 years. But Hurts goes back deep into the archives, he said, to reflect on how things were and how things are now — the rhythm of the games, the structure of the offense.

What’s he learning right now, and how does one Monday Night Football game test what he knows about himself and what he can push for?

“I stick to the process and I just stay the course,” Hurts said. “I think a lot of the going back is trying to find ways we can improve, find ways that we can have new perspective or maybe think about some of the perspective we’ve lost. I’m doing all those things in the midst of change. It’s thinking about all the different perspectives that I’ve had to lean on from a coaching perspective.

“From that aspect, it’s endless.”