Tanner McKee-DeVonta Smith connection sizzles as Jalen Hurts sits coming off five rough starts
McKee hit Smith for a 19-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter, which was a rare bright spot in an otherwise moribund loss. It was a play that creates intrigue about the future of the franchise.
If the Eagles emerged from Sunday with anything more than another participation-medal loss, it lay in the continued synergy between the backup quarterback and the franchise receiver.
It began in the last game of last season. The game was relatively meaningless, and so DeVonta Smith was the only starter who played. That’s because Smith needed 44 yards to reach 1,000 yards for the third time in his five seasons.
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Tanner McKee delivered, and early: by the end of the first quarter, he’d found Smith three times for 52 yards.
They built on that Sunday.
McKee, in his third season as an Eagles reserve, started in place of Jalen Hurts, who is on IR with a blood clot. (He also sort of started for Andy Dalton, who was released after beating out McKee for the backup job, then throwing an interception in his only pass attempt).
He hit Smith seven times for 75 yards, including a 19-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter.
It was the Eagles’ best play of the game and a rare bright spot in an otherwise moribund, 25-14 loss whose outcome seldom seemed in question.
The chemistry is real because the quality is there.
“I think Smitty’s a really good player,” McKee said. “Somebody asked me earlier, ‘What matchups do you like?’ and I was like, ‘I like Smitty against anybody.’ So I think his ability to separate to start to stop is very unique. Ultimately, I just think he’s a really good partner.“
McKee didn’t win Hurts’ job Sunday. He missed receivers, made bad decisions, failed to diagnose blitzes, and took three sacks. But he didn’t fumble, he didn’t throw an interception, and he didn’t look scared or overwhelmed.
He looked like an actual NFL quarterback, just as he did in the 2025 finale.
He’s thrown 133 passes, the last 45 of them on Sunday. He’s had just one real day of practice with the starters for the entirety of the season, and he spent most of the preseason holding a clipboard and watching Dalton’s rear end.
Things will only improve.
“Should look a lot better, knowing that he’s going to be the quarterback going forward,” Smith said. “To get those reps and things like that, to be able to go over a lot of things now with a full week.”
Several full weeks, actually.
The TD pass wasn’t the only key play. The pair connected for 16 yards on third-and-7 in the Eagles’ other scoring drive, in the second quarter, an elegant catch by Smith of a pass down the middle thrown slightly behind him.
But the TD was the truth; the sort of play that creates intrigue when considering the future of the franchise and its embattled franchise quarterback.
Hurts struggled in 2025, and he had played poorly in his five starts before hitting IR. Can McKee make the most of his guaranteed four-game audition and force the Eagles to ponder whether Hurts deserves a contract extension?
Of course, winning a game or two would help McKee’s cause.
» READ MORE: Tanner McKee can’t spark stagnant Eagles offense, 25-14 loss to Panthers extends skid to four games
The entropy of losing is a heavy burden, and the Eagles dropped their third in a row and fell to 2-4, their worst record since Nick Sirianni was hired in 2021.
The Smith TD gave the Birds a long-absent swell of momentum. It grew when they forced a quick three-and-out, and a poor punt gave the Eagles the ball near midfield.
But then, a bad shotgun snap from Jake Majors on first down forfeited the momentum they’d just gained.
“We all were thinking the same thing ... ‘We got to go down here and score again,’ ” Smith said. “Then we still just didn’t go out there and execute. Shooting ourselves in the foot.”
The Birds punted. The defense wilted.
An unnecessary roughness penalty by Cooper DeJean and a blown coverage, on successive plays, set up the game-sealing touchdown that made it 25-14 with 6 minutes, 38 seconds to play.
There isn’t much reason for optimism in Birdland these days.
They have dealt with injuries, the abrupt retirement of Lane Johnson, and the trade last week of underperforming center/guard Cam Jurgens.
The redesigned offense of new, first-time coordinator Sean Mannion was sputtering before Sunday. That’s partly due to injuries to the top three running backs, starting with Saquon Barkley, as well as left guard Landon Dickerson, both of whom seem a week or two away from returning. Dontayvion Wicks left Sunday’s game with an injury, too.
So did run-stopping defensive tackle Jordan Davis and edge rusher Nolan Smith Jr., who tied for the team lead when he got his third sack Sunday.
DeVonta Smith just left the ranks of the injured. He missed the past two games with a lingering hamstring issue and didn’t appear to be as fully included as he normally would have been early in the game.
He looked great late.
That’s something, at least.
» READ MORE: Eagles grades vs. Panthers: Offense remains disjointed, run defense and special teams struggle in 25-14 loss
McKee will be the starter for at least three more games, all of which are divisional matchups and, by their nature, the biggest games of the regular season. Don’t expect miracles.
McKee is a sixth-round pick from 2023. In a league desperate for competent quarterbacks and eager to overpay for anyone with a ceiling higher than Trent Dilfer, the Eagles have been unable to trade McKee.
Besides, the season might well be over.
In three weeks the Eagles are more likely than not to be 2-7. Only one team in NFL history has reached the playoffs after a 2-7 start. That was the 7-9 Commanders in 2020, who benefited from the COVID-19 madness and the Carson Wentz crash in Philadelphia, won a non-competitive NFC East, and promptly lost their home wild-card game.
Any of those marks — a 7-9 record, a division title, a home playoff game — would be a mighty achievement for the Eagles.
For now, it’s more realistic to just sit back and watch the development of Tanner McKee.
