FMIA Week 4: Hurts at Home in Philly, Players and Parents on Football Safety,

PHILADELPHIA – “Fifty-something degrees, wind’s blowing 20 or 30 miles an hour, raining sideways, down 14-nothing,” Jalen Hurts said an hour after the remnants of Hurricane Ian had played havoc with a football game here.

He could have continued this way: We’re 20 minutes into a game where we’re getting nothing done, I’ve thrown a pick-six, now it’s third-and-goal from the Jacksonville 16, and I scramble for 13 desperate yards, trying to get something going. Now it’s fourth down just inside the Jacksonville four-yard line.

The play here’s the gimme field goal. Get something on the board.

No. Coach Nick Sirianni chose to go for it. Offensive coordinator and play-caller Shane Steichen dialed up a pass. Hurts took a shotgun snap, looked fast at three covered targets, and took off around the 13-yard line. “Good quarterbacks bail you out when you don’t call the right play,” Sirianni said later. Around the three-, Hurts dove for the end zone and pinged violently off 235-pound rookie linebacker Devin Lloyd at the goal line, the ball bouncing out of Hurts’ hands when he was clearly over the line. Touchdown.

The collision … intense. “It happens, it happens. Football. You just do what you gotta do right there,” Hurts said.

Hurts, coach’s son, isn’t a celebrator, and he jogged to the sidelines. The Eagles were back in it on this miserable day. Sirianni found Hurts.

“You know why I went for it?” Sirianni told him. “I went for it because I trusted you.”

Eagles 29, Jaguars 21. The 4-0 Eagles, the NFL’s last unbeaten team. Now, in a hallway outside the Eagles’ locker room, Hurts looked like he was ready for a GQ cover shoot: Sky blue suit, white shirt with HURTS embroidered on each cuff, skinny navy tie, shiny blue pocket square, polished black dress shoes, gold watch. The playing conditions, a distant memory.

What wasn’t a distant memory?

“I went for it because I trusted you.”

Thinking about it, Hurts smiled slightly. “That’s something I really appreciate,” said Hurts, an unemotional sort.

Just five years ago, the Eagles were basking in the glow of their first Super Bowl win. Now, with almost an entirely new cast led by the 53^rd pick in the 2020 draft, they might contend to win number two. Just as Doug Pederson trusted Nick Foles in 2017, Nick Sirianni trusts Jalen Hurts in 2022. Football’s a funny, and transient, game.

From A to Z, Adams (Davante) to Zappe (Bailey), with a lot of alphabetic trouble around the letters “UNC,” this was one crazy week in the league where they play for pay.

Davante Adams made some beautiful music in the Raiders’ first win of the year, catching nine balls for 101 yards and eliminating the dumb “Where’s Davante?” questions.

“Gross motor instability” will disqualify players from playing football in that game, per Mike Florio, which is wise.

Jack Jones, a totally unknown New England rookie corner, pick-sixed Aaron Rodgers and then had the nerve to diss him. Kids these days.

Pick-6 for the rookie Jack Jones! @presidentjacc

?: #NEvsGB on CBS
?: Stream on NFL+ https://t.co/YPHqeLC4zg pic.twitter.com/OJItBVOmYW

— NFL (@NFL) October 2, 2022

Mahomes. That’s it. Just Mahomes.

Zach Wilson of the 2-2 (!) Jets beat the Men of Tomlin. Caught a TD pass too.

Cooper Rush will never lose a football game again. Question is, will he ever start another one?

DOINK! DOINK! Saints will hear that in their sleep.

Jim Irsay is not going to stand for this. He really isn’t. I can feel him fixing to blow from here.

Saquon the QB! Of the 3-1 Giants!

Jamaree Salyer played one of the best games in the NFL Sunday, and you’ve never heard of him. Admit it.

“Hindsight you take the points.” John Harbaugh’s not apologizing. Huge win for the Bills, another crusher for Baltimore.

The Lions. My gosh, the Lions. Average score of their four games: Foes 35.25, Detroit 35.00. Leos are 1-3.

Bailey Zappe (pronounced Zapp-ee) gave the Patriots a chance in Green Bay Sunday, which means that I’ve buried the lede in this column.

Aaron Donald … is in my Lawrence Taylor League now. To me, it’s a big deal.

Now back to the Eagles, and to Jalen Hurts. Hey: I thought it was always sunny in Philadelphia.

It is sunny, on Jalen Hurts’ side of the street. You know why? Because his team won the game. The Eagles won it in a different fashion than in the bombs-away way they’d won in September, running it 50 times for 210 yards, keeping the ball for almost 40 minutes. Fine with Hurts.

“The point about today,” Hurts said, “is more so about the conditions of the football game and not letting that deter us from our goal and our execution and what we wanted to do. Our ball security – we had that interception early, the pick-six. But you look at the turnover differential, I think it was five to one, just one for us. (True.) We put ourselves in a 14-0 hole. We hadn’t been in a hole like that all year. In these conditions, we played a different…