Jalen Hurts lost his best target and his rhythm late last season

A.J. Brown is in New England now, and Jalen Hurts's 2026 season will feel that absence. Not in the way the Eagles' front office promised it would—"we got deeper at receiver, we got Marquise Brown, it's an upgrade"—but in ways the tape and the numbers already warned us about. Last season's numbers warned us loudest.

Hurts threw 25 touchdowns and 6 interceptions last season across 16 games and looked elite through eight weeks. Then came the second half: his production fell from 21.7 PPR points per game to 15.9, a 27 percent drop that happened without his snap percentage dropping, without the scheme changing noticeably, without an injury he reported.

Ball Ranks has Hurts 73rd overall and QB6, projecting 292.7 points. His ADP of 79.0 is six picks cheaper than our rank — the market has already discounted him for the A.J. Brown trade, arguably a touch too far. The question is whether the discount covers the second-half fade too.

A.J. Brown's departure is not "depth" filling

A.J. Brown was traded to New England after scoring 220.3 PPR points on 121 targets in 15 games — Philadelphia's entire high-leverage passing game in one player. The response was volume, not a replacement: Hollywood Brown arrived from Kansas City (137.7 PPR last season), Dontayvion Wicks from Green Bay, Elijah Moore from Buffalo, and rookie Makai Lemon with the 20th overall pick.

DeVonta Smith now tops the depth chart, and he is a genuine No. 1 by most teams' standards. But Smith and A.J. Brown together forced defenses to choose their poison; Smith plus a committee lets coordinators roll coverage his way and dare the newcomers to win. A.J. Brown's contested-catch, red-zone profile is the specific thing nobody on this roster replaces.

For fantasy drafters, that means backing a quarterback entering a new coordinator's offense with less certainty about target distribution than he has had since 2021.

The second-half fade was not game script

His first eight games: 173.8 PPR, a 21.7-point pace. His final eight: 127.3 PPR, a 15.9-point pace.

The schedule did not get harder. The Eagles' opponents allowed 241 passing yards per game (rank 32 of 32, extremely soft) and 119 rushing yards per game (rank 27, soft). If anything, the second half featured more favorable matchups than the first half.

His passing volume held steady, but the scoring engine cooled on both sides of his game: five rushing touchdowns in the first eight games, three after, with his carries dipping from over seven a game to just under six. The bottleneck was efficiency — the operating rhythm that produced 33 total touchdowns went dormant.

Nick Sirianni remains the head coach, but Sean Mannion is the new offensive coordinator — a first-time play caller who was Green Bay's quarterbacks coach in 2025. First-time coordinators do not reliably reverse second-half fades. They sometimes amplify them.

Sean Mannion's unknown scheme

Mannion comes up through the Shanahan-McVay coaching tree, which prioritizes pre-snap reads and quick-hitting passes. That style suits Hurts's decision-making. But having coached quarterbacks at the NFL level does not guarantee you can call plays at the NFL level, especially with a retooled receiver room to integrate.

The Eagles will have to re-teach. Hurts will have to adjust. The market's pick-79 price acknowledges the drag; it just may not acknowledge all of it.

Our projection of 292.7 points bets on the middle ground: not the 21.7-point opening pace, not the 15.9-point fade — a rushing-supported floor with a passing game that takes until October to settle. That is still a QB6, and his legs make the floor unusually safe for the price.

The verdict

Hurts at his 79.0 ADP is a fair price with the A.J. Brown discount already applied, and our rank of 73 says there is even a little value left. Take him in the seventh round as a locked starter whose rushing floor survives a slow scheme install. Just draft him as the safe QB1 he is, not the top-three scorer he was two years ago — that version needed a receiver Philadelphia no longer employs.

See Hurts's live projection and history on his player profile, or compare him with every quarterback on the complete 2026 board.