Eagles

Super Bowl LIX Comparisons: Quarterbacks

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Jalen Hurts

Leading up to the Philadelphia Eagles rematch with the Kansas City Chiefs in New Orleans, Sports Talk Philly and Eagledelphia will compare the personnel of the two teams each day until gameday is here.

In this edition of our week-long comparison, we will look at the quarterbacks that the Eagles and Chiefs will field for the big game.


Philadelphia QBs | Jalen Hurts, Kenny Pickett, Tanner McKee

Jalen Hurts spent most of this season not looking like the MVP candidate he was two years ago. He’s had too many games this season where he comes out starting slow, but he’s been efficient and spent the latter half of the season taking care of the ball far better than last year. During the regular season, he had a 68.7% completion percentage with 2903 yards and 18 touchdowns. His legs have seemed to come back recently and he added 630 yards rushing with 14 touchdowns on the ground. While he wasn’t a standout during the regular season, his return from a concussion has been better than expected and the NFC Championship was arguably his best game over the last two years – a 20/28 performance for 246 yards and a touchdown (three rushing TDs) where nearly every incompletion was a drop or good throwaway and the ball didn’t get turned over. If he can stay that hot, he can match any QB.

Kenny Pickett struggled when called in on short notice, so that’s a concern. Otherwise, he went 10/15 for 143 yards and a touchdown with freshly cracked ribs to clinch the division, looking far better when he had prepped to be the starter.

Typically the emergency option, McKee had the football world talking. His season stats put him at 30/45 for 323 yards and a touchdown. He looked better than some team’s starters and certainly looked better than any backup the Chiefs had. The biggest issue with his game in the Eagles offense is that he is a straight passer without much escapability/mobility, which may change the team to alter their offense a bit for him should he be needed.


Kansas City QBs | Patrick Mahomes, Carson Wentz

Mahomes is it for Kansas City. In an offense without many standouts, he powered a pass-heavy offense with 3928 passing yards on a 67.5 completion percentage. He had 26 touchdowns to 11 interceptions and continues to create in the running game when able to escape – adding 307 yards and two touchdowns on the season. He isn’t an MVP candidate this year, either, but he’s lead five different fourth-quarter comeback drives over the course of the season to win games. Mahomes is also coming off of a hot game, where he completed just under 70% of his passes for 245 yards and a touchdown while adding 43 yards and two touchdowns via the ground game.

The one knock on Mahomes recently is that he’s fumbled the ball in each of the Cheifs’ playoff games this season.

Behind Mahomes is former Eagles QB Carson Wentz. His lone non-garbage time stats were against the Broncos, where he didn’t crack 100 yards passing and took four sacks. It was not a good performance at all and the team will be in trouble if they have to lean on him in any way.


Edge:

This is a tough one to judge. The backup role is a clear no-brainer for the Eagles, but the thought of every team is that that shouldn’t matter. If we were taking the hot hand, Hurts has the most momentum but with a two-week gap between games and plenty of distractions it’s hard to argue that anyone will be a hot hand and it’s more like a standalone game. That makes the season-long metrics more valuable and Mahomes has been the more consistent of the two and lead his team to far more comebacks (though that isn’t necessarily a good reflection of the rest of the team), particularly with Hurts’ most recent injury being far more recent than the one Mahomes is dealing with. Due to that, I have to give the edge here to KC.


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