MVP No More: A Psychiatrist’s Take on Jalen Hurts’ Decline

Jalen Hurts

The media keeps equivocating. Maybe Jalen Hurts’ performance against the Packers was “rust.” Or post-concussion related. When the body of work that he has put out there this season suggests that Hurts is just not the same quarterback as in 2022.

I’m a sports psychiatrist, and there’s good reason that people would hark back to the glory days and glory performances when evaluating an athlete, or another person for that matter. But the truth is that recency counts, and this is what we saw in the 2023 season and his performance against the Packers.

When reporters are honest, they occasionally call Hurts out, but too often they sugarcoat it. The prefix “in” is used a lot. Jalen is indecisive, inaccurate, inconsistent. These are not the qualities you should be seeing in your $50 million a year, MVP runner-up in 2022 quarterback.

Philadelphia is so desperate for a winner that they can be in denial about an athlete’s inabilities. Donovan McNabb at the end, Joel Embiid now. James Harden. Craig Kimbrel. Jose Alvarado.

Sometimes there’s a burst. That wakes the echoes of a past great performance. And people seize on that as evidence that Hurts can do it. Unfortunately, there is then the wish he will do it, quickly followed by the belief that he will do it. That’s how denial works.

If you bought a Lamborghini, but it couldn’t do over 50 miles an hour, except occasionally, you would take it to the shop. You wouldn’t be satisfied. You wouldn’t put up with it. The whole Eagle offense is a Lamborghini. It is a machine, but it needs someone driving it that can get the performance out of it that it deserves, and Hurts has not been that guy. Someone has to say that if Hurts looks the way he looked against the Packers when they the Eagles play the Rams, and somehow the Eagles win, that it’s time for a loaner car.

As a sports psychiatrist, I see A.J. Brown’s behavior after the Panthers game as over the top, when he called his quarterback out, and reading a book on the sidelines during the game as an alarm bell. Like all divas, Brown can be over the top, but these two instances were too much.

Brown is the canary in the coal mine. Everyone is making excuses for Jalen, and covering up the fact that he is just not the guy right now.

Someone is going to have to say it out loud. Protecting him is just taking too much energy from the team when they should be focusing it on their performance against the next opponent.

Howie Roseman strategy of drafting the highest rated Alabama or Georgia player has kept him from some of the disasters of previous years. It’s been the safe road and, in some cases, a wonderful Pro has emerged.

However, that strategy will be tested today. To my knowledge, none of those players has ever played in snow before! I may be forgetting a game last year or the year before, but no meaningful snowfall like this.

Was LeSean McCoy great in the snow some years ago because he grew up in Harrisburg and had to run in snow from when he would play in snow as a kid.

We will soon learn if these guys have any of the snow skills “Shady” had.