How Jalen Hurts' concussion primarily affects Eagles' Saquon Barkley

PHILADELPHIA — Maybe we needed a reminder that quarterback Jalen Hurts is vital to the Eagles’ success.

It wasn’t so much Hurts’ passing or running, but rather Saquon Barkley’s running.

For weeks, Eagles coach Nick Sirianni has tried to claim that Hurts had an MVP season despite throwing for fewer than 200 yards in three straight games before throwing for 290 yards against the Steelers last week.

The collective reaction was something along the lines of “Sure, Nick.”

And then midway through the first quarter Sunday, Hurts suffered a concussion on a 13-yard run to the Commanders’ 21-yard line when he was hit in the helmet by Washington’s Frankie Luvu. Hurts initially went back into the huddle when the referee asked him to get checked for a concussion.

Kenny Pickett replaced him, and the Eagles were never the same as they jumped to a 14-point lead and lost 36-33 to the Commanders.

One only had to watch Barkley struggle through the final three quarters to see how a season en route to the Super Bowl without Hurts could quickly come to an end.

As a reminder, Hurts is expected to recover from the concussion at some point before the playoffs begin the weekend of January 11-13, if not sooner. Sirianni said he had no update on Hurts’ condition after the game.

“Anything that has to do with the head is out of our hands,” Sirianni said.

Let’s get back to Barkley.

Barkley is a much more likely MVP candidate than Hurts after rushing for 150 yards on Sunday. Barkley has 1,838 yards rushing through 15 games and needed 268 yards in the final two games to surpass Eric Dickerson’s single-season NFL rushing record of 2,105 yards set in 1984.

“The dynamic of Jalen’s ability to run the ball, that’s what a lot of our stuff is built on,” Barkley said. “When you lose a guy like that, it definitely hurts.”

Look at it this way: Barkley had 109 yards rushing on his first seven carries, culminating with his 68-yard TD run with 2:18 remaining in the first quarter as the Eagles scored 21 points on three touchdowns. He then had 41 yards on 22 carries. The Eagles scored no more touchdowns and settled for four field goals.

AMAZING LOSS:Eagles lose Jalen Hurts, big lead in stunning last-second loss to Commanders

LOSING HIS COOL:Eagles CJ Gardner-Johnson is ejected and then gives a double finger salute to the Commanders fans

It should be noted that Barkley’s long TD run came when Pickett was in the game. Soon the Commanders rushed to stop Barkley and dared Pickett to beat them with the pass. He didn’t make it, going 14-of-24 for 143 yards with one touchdown and one interception.

Hurts could beat them with the pass, as he showed last Sunday when the Steelers stopped Barkley and held him to 65 yards on 19 carries.

Sure, there were other factors that contributed to the Eagles’ stunning loss on Jayden Daniels’ 10-yard touchdown pass to Jamison Crowder with six seconds left. They could start with DeVonta Smith’s brutal drop over the middle inside the Washington 15-yard line with 2:02 left, with the Eagles holding a 2-point lead.

If Smith had kept the ball, the Eagles would have had a first down and could have run out the clock.

“I dropped the ball,” Smith said. “I mean, I’m not going to be upset about it. It’s life, part of the game. …It cost us the game. It’s no one else’s fault but my fault.”

There was more. The Eagles called 10 penalties for 91 yards, including two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties on safety CJ Gardner-Johnson, the second of which led to his ejection in the third quarter. This is one of the main reasons the Eagles lost despite forcing turnovers.

“Just sloppy,” Eagles coach Sirianni said. “Sloppy with penalties, sloppy with too many men on the field, sloppy with our fundamentals.”

And the Eagles couldn’t make Washington pay because they didn’t have Hurts to pay Barkley.

“They tried to stop the run,” wide receiver AJ Brown said. “Saquon got going very, very early. They started loading up the box and forcing us to throw the ball and win our 1-on-1 games from the outside.”

“This is no shade for Kenny. (He and Hurts) played two different games. Kenny did a great job I had thousands of reps with Jalen, I’ve been with him for three years now.

“We just came in and rolled the dice with Kenny.”

And snake eyes appeared.

Brown is right. He and Hurts have been close friends for nearly a decade and teammates for nearly three full seasons. As a starter, Hurts gets virtually every first-team rep as Pickett works with the scout team.

So Brown talked to Pickett on the sidelines in the huddle about how they could adapt more quickly.

“We honestly talked after every series,” Pickett said. “Some things we came up with off the top of our heads, some things (Brown and DeVonta Smith) did with Jalen that I didn’t know about, trying to catch up in certain parts of the game.”

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