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Less than 24 hours after Lane Johnson ended a surefire Hall of Fame career and opted to walk away from the Eagles, the team’s general manager dealt Cam Jurgens to the Ravens for a fifth-round pick in 2027 and a second-round pick in 2028. Jurgens, if you’ll remember, was Philadelphia’s second-round pick in 2022 and was in part hand-selected by Jason Kelce to be his replacement. Jurgens, though, has been playing much more guard lately and has about 38% of his total career snaps at a position that you could consider not his natural one.
On the surface, this seems like the kind of minute NFL transaction that would not register in our fantasy-addled brains. But, given the rich backdrop to the Jurgens trade, the Eagles’ offensive struggles and a notable offseason coaching move, it is actually the grist for some really textured conspiracy theory stuff. So, let’s break it down from every angle, with a series of sensible reactions and irresponsible overreactions. Imagine this as a conversation between your friend who believes John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Don Corleone and another friend who can’t quite summon the courage to try a different kind of mustard at the grocery store.
Irresponsible overreaction: The Eagles are soft tanking four weeks into the NFL season with a .500 record and are purposely nuking the careers of Nick Sirianni and Jalen Hurts.
The Eagles’ winning percentage with Lane Johnson during his 14-year career is an astounding 65.1%, compared to 39.8% when he doesn’t play. It’s one of the more dramatic tackle splits in recent NFL history and bolsters Johnson’s credentials as a first-ballot Hall of Famer and, quite possibly, one of the three greatest right tackles to play professional football. This season in particular illustrates that, with Philadelphia seeing about a 10% pressure increase with Johnson off the field. Over the course of his entire career with the Eagles, Philadelphia quarterbacks received pressure at about a 3% greater rate. But in 2022, 2024 and this season, that number ballooned toward or almost hit 10% dead on.
This season, Philadelphia attempted to replace one-and-done offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo with the young Sean Mannion but is continuing to struggle as a unit, especially in the second half of games. Now spotlighted in that struggle, in the light of Johnson’s retirement, is how impossible it seems for Jalen Hurts to get to certain reads in his progression. This isn’t taking anything away from Hurts, but I’ll bet that a good quarterbacks coach could make the argument that Hurts’s life without one of the greatest offensive lines ever assembled—remember, Kelce could also go down as the greatest center to play professional football—will be exceptionally difficult given what he was able to get away with when he had the best offensive line in football.
That’s a long way of introducing the idea that GM Howie Roseman saw Johnson retire, saw the Ravens pushing first-round pick Vega Ioane to center and decided to do what Roseman and owner Jeffrey Lurie have been known to do: hit the eject button on a project that looks destined to fail before it actually, spectacularly and completely fails.
If this is indeed the case, it’s brilliant. If Roseman and Lurie correctly identified the downward trajectory of this franchise, he’s already secured an additional first-round pick in 2028 for A.J. Brown and an additional second-round pick in that same draft for Jurgens. Managerially, it’s the ultimate advantage that Philadelphia possesses over other clubs. By having Roseman essentially possessing no fear of job loss, he can act in a way that disproportionately affects the players and coaching staff for the betterment of a time and place in which neither Hurts nor Nick Sirianni will likely be there.
Of course, Siranni and Hurts are probably less willing to stand up and give the general manager a standing ovation. Sirianni, despite reaching two Super Bowls and winning one, has been consistently in the cross hairs, having to prove and reprove that his CEO-style approach is more valuable than that of a steady hand at the offensive play-calling spot. Hurts has come under suspicion, too, with the offense undergoing its most dramatic successes during a season (2024) when the ball was basically taken out of his hands and given to Saquon Barkley behind that elite offensive line. Now that Johnson and Jurgens are gone, Hurts will have an increasingly difficult time attempting to reverse the optics of his recent performances by blaming that on instability at the coordinator position.
Roseman, too, is no stranger to outwardly throwing up his hands and giving up for the betterment of the long term. In 2020, the team benched Hurts for Nate Sudfeld in the middle of a competitive Week 17 game to secure a higher and, as it turns out, much more valuable draft pick.
Nick and Jalen, feel free to make your appointment for a tinfoil hat fitting whenever you’re ready.
Responsible reaction: Cam Jurgens wasn’t playing all that well at guard, his cap hit rises exponentially over the next few years and his long-term prospects after the back injury can at least be called into question.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s address some facts. Jurgens told reporters last year that he was still recovering from a back surgery that took place in February 2025. This will never discount the fact that Jurgens received unanimous praise for dealing with that issue, especially at a position that exacerbates pain in that area. Still, in the cold and calculated world of the NFL, a person who is writing those checks can see it as a liability. Literally two days ago, Sirianni was asked at a press conference if he considered benching Jurgens at guard.
So far this season, Drew Kendall, who has played center while Jurgens selflessly moved to guard to help the Eagles, despite, again, being in pain and not playing his natural position, has allowed only four pressures, one sack and two hurries. By comparison, Tyler Linderbaum, the highest paid center in the NFL, has allowed seven pressures, no sacks and five hurries. I’m not saying Kendall is playing better than Linderbaum, I’m saying he’s holding his own enough to justify the hefty price tag that Baltimore was willing to pay for Jurgens. In the position of a general manager, this feels like enough of a sample size to explore what Kendall, a fifth-round pick in 2025, might look like over the long term.
The Eagles are attempting to evaluate a much younger version of their offensive line as they head into a series of drafts with increased capital (which, as colleague Albert Breer pointed out, is going to be massively important as the Eagles face the cap ramifications of their big-time spending spree on players like Jalen Carter). Gaining that sample size from younger players along the line does hurt Hurts and Barkley, without question, but in the mind of management, the offensive line was the engine of the greatest era in team history. Rebuilding that unit into something it once resembled is the principle task ahead of Roseman and will define the latter years of his tenure as GM.
Similarly, if I were Jurgens, I would be happy. Back at center, playing next to a bright young star in Ioane, the burden can be off his shoulders on certain double teams and he can return to being the hub of the offense as a protection caller. He is moving to a location where he’s valued and, because the Ravens traded draft capital to get him, they are less likely to try to slow-squeeze the remainder of his contract, as would have been the case in Philadelphia.
Big-picture question asked by both parties: Does this pave the way for the return of Jeff Stoutland?
Looming in the background of all this is the departure of Jeff Stoutland, one of the greatest offensive line coaches in the history of the NFL. Stoutland and the Eagles broke up this offseason as the team wanted to move toward a different type of offense that didn’t pair with the way Stoutland wanted to operate the run game.
With so many big-picture questions in the air, it’s worth wondering if this paves a runway for a reunion at some point in time. Like our overreacting friend mentioned, the move to trade Jurgens could impact the performances of Hurts, Barkley, Mannion and Sirianni to some degree. The move could be looked at not just as a value play but the demarcation of the end of an era. Much like Roseman and Lurie sprinkling in Shanahan influences into the increasingly stale Doug Pederson era before a full-scale change, this kind of meddling could be seen as, ultimately, a sign of irritation from up above and the desire to build something different moving forward.
And even if our more reasonable friend is correct, that this was merely about skill and building up a new, young offensive line in the wake of Johnson’s retirement, that should broach the possibility that the young line needs someone like Stoutland more than ever. As to the internal dynamics of this situation, I don’t know how hurt feelings were and how done both sides are with one another. But I do know that the Eagles do very little that doesn’t align with their long-term 3-D chess plan.
We now await the next move from Roseman.
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CONOR ORR
Conor Orr is a Senior Writer for Sports Illustrated with more than 15 years of experience covering the NFL. His work has been cited in Best American Sportswriting and has won a PFWAA award. Prior to Sports Illustrated, he covered both the Giants and Jets for The Star-Ledger. Conor lives in New Jersey with his amazing wife and three children.
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