PHOENIX − We have seen the cases where both Eagles wide receivers DeVonta Smith and A.J. Brown were upset when the ball didn’t come their way.
Smith once demonstrably showed his frustration at the end of a game against the Giants in Nov. 2021, ripping off his helmet and screaming as Jalen Hurts threw the ball to Jalen Reagor, who dropped it.
Brown showed his displeasure three weeks ago in a playoff game against the Giants.
What you don’t see is how Hurts gives it right back to Brown, Smith and tight end Dallas Goedert when they don’t run the correct route, or when they’re not open when they’re supposed to be.
FROM THE DEPTHS:Howie Roseman rebuilt Eagles to reach Super Bowl in 2 years; why daughter isn’t impressed
ANDY AND NICK:Andy Reid once gave Nick Sirianni his worst moment; how it led Eagles coach to Super Bowl
Look no further than that unique quarterback-receiver relationship that has enabled the Eagles to reach the Super Bowl where they’ll play the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday, while setting several offensive records.
“I think birds of a feather flock together,” Hurts said. “And those are guys I call true friends. Not only because the men that they are, but the friends that they are, and the competitors that they are, and what drives them, and what motivates them to be great.
“We come in every day eager to take another step. No one is independent in this thing. We’re all dependent on one another. We challenge each other, we encourage each other, we push each other.”
And that means tough love.
Hurts can talk that way to Brown and Smith because he knows them so well, and vice versa. Hurts and Brown became best friends long before the Eagles traded for Brown last spring. Hurts and Smith were teammates at Alabama and close friends even after Hurts spent his senior season at Oklahoma in 2019.
They were drafted by the Eagles one year apart − Hurts in the second round in 2020, Smith in the first round the next year.
“It’s really like unspoken,” Brown said. “It’s just like we make the head-nod, or something like that. It really goes unspoken. Unless we’re communicating about something that we’re both seeing. We want to be great, and I think that’s great. And I think the friendship part helps it out even more because we can say whatever we want to say to each other, and there won’t be any hard feelings.”
How often does that happen?
“All the time,” Brown said. “We talk all the time. There’s no ego, no hard feelings. It’s never personal.”
The results are evident. Brown set a franchise record in his first season with the Eagles with 1,496 yards receiving. Smith had 1,196 yards. They became the first Eagles receiving duo to each break 1,000 yards in the same season.
Hurts, meanwhile, is 16-1 this season including playoffs, tying a franchise record with 35 total touchdowns − 22 passing, 13 rushing.
Goedert, meanwhile, added 702 yards receiving despite missing five games with a shoulder injury.
Much of that is from tough love, their drive to be the best, and their refusal to settle for anything less.
“It all starts with Jalen,” Goedert said. “He’s such a perfectionist. He wants it to be perfect every time. And that starts in the summer when you’re running routes with him. It’s a good ball, you got it, but he wasn’t happy with it, so you gotta do it again.
“Obviously, the best accountability isn’t from the coaches. It’s from the other players. If we see something on the field, we’ll talk about it, and we’ll fix it.”
Look around the NFL to get an idea of how unusual that is, where a receiver can criticize a quarterback and not have to worry about dividing the team. Heck, the Eagles are filled with these examples.
The Donovan McNabb-Terrell Owens relationship fell apart in 2005, one year after they went to the Super Bowl. Then in 2018, the season after the Eagles again went to the Super Bowl, Alshon Jeffrey was telling a national reporter that Carson Wentz was targeting Zach Ertz too much.
By the end of the 2020 season, Wentz had lost all trust with his receivers, and was replaced by Hurts, and traded soon after.
McNabb and Wentz weren’t able to handle being challenged, whether it was Owens’ presence for McNabb, or the Eagles drafting Hurts in the second round the year after Wentz got a mega-contract extension.
But that’s not the case with Hurts. He’ll famously say that often “I never feel like I’ve arrived,” and that he’s always striving to get better.
That is evident with his stats, as he improved from completing 51% of his passes as a rookie in 2020 to 61% in 2021 to 66.5% this season, when he became an MVP finalist.
“The guy has always had the confidence in his game,” Smith said. “But it’s at another level now. The swagger that he plays with. Just going out there knowing that he’s that guy, and that he’s going to be the guy that’s going to run this ship, run this offense for the next however many years. It’s the swagger that he plays with.”
And Hurts gets that swagger because Brown, Smith and Goedert will tell him like it is, and vice versa. That, too, is part of being a leader.
“I think he understands the importance of knowing who you’re talking to,” Smith said. “He’ll come to me and AJ and he’ll probably get on us about something that happened. That’s fine with us because we’re boys and we understand. That’s how close we are.”
Smith was then asked if he and Brown get on Hurts.
“Definitely. All the time,” he said.
Then Smith expanded on how the relationship works.
“If we run a route in a way that we weren’t supposed to run it, and we’re not at the same depth, he’s going to let us know,” Smith said. “But if we run a route and we’re open, and we don’t get the ball, then we’re going to let him know.
“But it’s all love at the end of the day. We talk about it. We go back and forth with things like that. But at the end of the day, we’re just trying to make each other better. There’s nobody trying to down-talk the other guy.”
As Hurts said, “birds of a feather flock together.”
Contact Martin Frank at mfrank@delawareonline.com. Follow on Twitter @Mfranknfl.
